


Crash

by hypertensivehitachiins



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Alcohol, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Car Accidents, Consensual Underage Sex, Courtroom Drama, Crossdressing, Extended Families, F/M, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Grief/Mourning, High School, Hospitals, Host Clubs, Implied statutory rape, Inheritance, Loss of Virginity, Minor Character Death, Orphans, Protective Parents, Sibling Incest, Sports, Twincest, Twins, Underage Drinking, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:16:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 31
Words: 103,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypertensivehitachiins/pseuds/hypertensivehitachiins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The same accident that kills Kaoru's parents ends up filling the void in her life, and reveals that she is not the girl she thinks she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Accident

"Come on, Kaoru, give me a chance."

The tall, narrow-hipped girl did not turn around as she walked briskly down the street, the boy trailing a few steps behind. Her long red ponytail swung jauntily in time with her step, and she was looking at the sky, smiling.

"You know, I could," she said, her voice cheerfully dignified, "But I cannot think of a single reason why I'd want to."

"Goddamn little She-Devil," the boy muttered under his breath.

"For the record, insulting me won't help," she answered without breaking stride, her voice almost sing-song.

She was returning from basketball practice, and her mood was nearly cloudless. She'd said goodbye to the last of her girls - as the team had a habit of walking home together, tarrying to chat by each girl's house before saying goodbye. Kaoru lived farthest away. That day, practice had gone well and gossip had gone better, and not even the sullen classmate who had begun to follow her could ruin the afternoon.

"Oh, come on, you know you're proud of it."

That much was true. The moniker wasn't entirely undeserved, as Kaoru's being an odd sort of bird had always been her calling card. Though on the quiet side when not with the basketball clique, she was definitely given to stirring up trouble. Once, she had "borrowed" a field line striper to write ancient runes into the baseball field. Time and again, she would show up to school in a boys' uniform, and sometimes in various cosplays - the latter antics usually ending in her getting marched to the principal's office and being sent home to change. Her school performance, too, was spotty. At times she spent entire days playing computer games under her desk, hardly concealing her boredom. At other times, she made the class period into an extended conversation between her and the teacher about increasingly obscure aspects of the subject. And then there was the notable occasion when she had volunteered to work on the high school's webpage, only to deck it out with a banner of a borderline X-rated nature.

Whenever she was asked why she did was she did, she'd smile in her dignified, cheerful way, and say that it was to break up the monotony.

"I AM proud," she spun around, having reached the gate of her house. "But today I don't really feel like free bubble tea."

She ran up the garden path and disappeared with a flick of the hair and a slam of the door.

The truth was, she probably would not have minded some bubble tea. She hardly ever said no to dates - once again out of boredom. She also did not like to be alone if she could help it. The truth was, she ALWAYS felt lonely. No matter where she was and who was by her side, boy or girl, it always felt like something - or somebody - was missing. The feeling would catch up with her without warning, and whenever it did she'd let her happy and healthy air deflate a bit as her mind began to forage and something tugged under her ribs. Suddenly, every connection she'd ever made would start feeling like a lie, and the world became so boring and empty and hollow that it was hardly worth crying over. And it was worst, of course, when she was quite objectively alone, locked inside four walls, and the only sound was that of a freeway far away.

Except that day it was worth it - because that day would be about family. She took off her hoodie and let her bag fall where it would as she made her way into the small living room, smiling hello at the Mickey clock on the wall, the Minnie calendar, the Donald Duck shoe stand and the Pluto cover on the couch opposite the television. Kaoru's parents were Disney freaks and no mistake, every inch of the little suburban house a testament to the fact. That weekend had been their parents' anniversary, and they had gone away to a hot spring for a couple of days. Now it was Sunday, though, and they were due back any minute, having promised their daughter that they would all go out to dinner.

Kaoru loved her parents, though it was clear as day that they couldn't possibly have given birth to her. The three of them had always been their own little unit, as both her parents had been only children, both sets of grandparents were deceased, and the only extended family lived in faraway Kyushu. Every day off, the three of them spent together. Sometimes, they accompanied dad fly-fishing, as he was an aficionado of that sort of thing. At other times they'd go hiking and shrine-visiting to please mother. Whenever they did something like that together, Kaoru almost managed to forget her loneliness. And that weekend, when both mom and dad were away, Kaoru had made her parents a gift to surprise them - a hanging mobile with 22 paper cranes, one for every year they'd been married.

She had just turned on the TV for background noise as she rifled through drawers for wrapping paper when her phone began playing the opening chords of the song "Shissou."

"Is this Kaoru Suzumiya?" she heard a sterile voice on other end of the line.

"Yes."

"Miss Suzumiya, there's been an accident."

…

"Miss Suzumiya, I am very sorry."

Kaoru stared at her feet to keep the room from swimming. If she didn't, she had the distinct feeling that she might float away. The noise of the waiting area and the emergency room beyond blurred into a faraway hum as the staff went on tending to the victims of the crash - a five-car pileup on a major highway headed into the city.

At first, Kaoru had not registered the words. She had heard them, to be sure, but they held no connection to reality. When they asked her if she needed a minute, she had nodded, but it might have been five minutes or five hours by now. The only feeling she had was one of falling - off a precipice that had no end. She wondered, vaguely, why she didn't feel afraid, or gutted, or even incredulous. It was like pressing a key on a piano to find the strings had been severed.

"Excuse me, Miss?"

Kaoru heard a soft voice and raised her eyes to find a woman standing in front of her. She looked to be middle-aged, but was still beautiful, with a face like a painting and eyes that looked a little sunken. She wore an elegant tweed suit, a hat to match, and her gloved hands cradled a leather clutch purse. A man stood just behind her, holding her elbow.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but may we talk?"

Kaoru blinked and nodded. The couple did not look like hospital employees or anyone she knew, but it made no difference.

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but you... look a great deal like our son," said the woman.

The words seemed to come from far away, and Kaoru struggled to engage her mind, but it was like an engine that refused to turn.

"Your… son?" Why did it matter that she looked like someone's son? Who WERE these people, anyway? And how could she resemble THEIR son? She was red-headed, with hazel-eyes and Hapa features, while the two of them seemed to be Yamato stock going back to the first emperor. She felt a mild annoyance - her first emotion in a while - and did her best to hide it as she looked back quizzically at the couple.

The man gave the woman an IPhone he had been holding, and she handed it to the Kaoru. The girl took it, and her stomach did a triple-flip.

It was a facebook (™) photo of… HERSELF. Or it would have been if her hair was short, parted on the side instead of the middle, and gelled in place to look artfully windswept. The being in the picture smiled at her - a brilliant, practiced picture-day smile - and wore a cerulean-blue blazer, the insignia on the lapel spelling "OR" in gold letters.

Is this a joke? - Kaoru thought, scrolling to see more of the page. "Hikaru Hitachiin," the info box red - Hitachiin, like the fashion house? she half-registered herself thinking - "Ouran Academy, High School Year 1." Ouran, as far as she knew, was a posh prep school. Kaoru glanced again at the photo, and then at the couple in front of her, who were looking at her with a mixture of trepidation and hope.

"I… don't understand…" she said.

"Well, he's our adopted son, technically" - the man spoke up, putting his hand over his wife's as a spasm ran over her lips and she lowered her eyes. "Although he's no less ours for that reason. We believe you and he may be… related."

Kaoru looked down at the photo and wanted to feel something - or at least think something - but nothing came. The boy's smile looked like it was on loan from a Hollywood movie - and thus somehow barren. She had a hard time believing he really existed. In any case, given the day's events the idea of family she never knew existed was not something she was ready to process.

"My parents just died in a car crash," she said slowly, fumbling for the words that would get her meaning across without being rude.

"Oh" - the woman had extracted a pack of tissues from her purse, and was about to take one out, but changed her mind and handed the package to Kaoru instead. "I'm so… sorry." She sat down next to the girl.

"I was adopted too, but I lived with them my whole life" - Kaoru answered the wordless question in the woman's eyes, surprised by how matter-of-fact her words sounded even as the tears rose, stinging, to her throat. Both of them were silent for a while.

"I'm sorry, I didn't ask, what do you call yourself?"

"Kaoru."

"Kaoru, my name is Yuzuha." She glanced at the picture on the phone still in the girl's hands, along with the pack of tissues. "And this is my husband" - she gestured - "Yuzuke. Were your parents in the large accident that happened today on Shuto Expressway?"

The girl nodded.

"Our son was in the same crash, and he's in critical condition. I just thought that if there isn't anyone here with you, we could stay together for the time being."


	2. The Melancholy of Kaoru Suzumiya

"Miss Suzumiya?" A nurse had materialized before Kaoru. "Is there anyone I can call for you? We need to find someone to be your guardian for the time being. Perhaps your grandparents or extended family?"

Kaoru looked at the nurse dully. The young, uniformed woman's features were folded into a look of practiced commiseration.

"Uh… The only other family I have is in Kyushu. But I don't know them all that well." Come to think of it, she didn't even have their numbers in her phone - they saw each other perhaps twice a year.

"Friends of the family, then? Or neighbors?"

Kaoru tried to ramp up the gears of her mind, but they complained and sputtered. The nurse had a point. She was only fifteen and a minor, so living alone was not an option. But where would she go, now that her parents were gone? And what would she do? She HAD people she called friends, of course, and so did the Suzumiyas, but she could not think of a single person she wanted to be around right then - or anytime soon.

"My name is Yuzuha Hitachiin, and I'm a friend of the family." Kaoru started - the magnitude of day's events had far exceeded her capacity to keep up, and her recent encounter with the tweed-suited woman managed to completely slip her mind. But Yuzuha had risen, and extended her hand graciously to the nurse. Her voice was almost buoyant. "I'll be happy to take care of Kaoru for a while. Though of course the arrangements should be left to the actual family."

Kaoru was about to object - she barely knew Yuzuha after all, and part of her was unsettled by the woman's inordinate interest in her. After all, the only thing that linked them - as far as Kaoru had been able to digest - was a series of pixels on a telephone screen. But then again, the Hitachiins would probably not be going anywhere anytime soon if their son was in critical condition. That would mean she would not be going anywhere either, and that suited Kaoru just fine. The hospital was a safe, neutral territory, and it was better than going home, where she would be around all the things mom and dad would never come back to.

"Well, good. That's... lucky," said the nurse, accepting Yuzuha's handshake and looking as quizzical as her professional demeanor would allow. It had probably not escaped her notice that Hitachiin was the name of another patient who recently arrived half-dead. The young woman turned to Kaoru. "Would you like to say goodbye?" - she asked.

…

Kaoru's walked into the room with the doctor and the nurse, and immediately felt like she had been shot. There was no pain, just shock - followed by a whole new level of numbness.

Her parents lay on two identical tables, covered by sheets except for their faces, and medical machines stood silently around them like further witnesses to Kaoru's grief. They had both died instantly on the scene, the doctor had told her, probably hoping it would be a consolation.

Of course. Of course they had died instantly. The Suzumiyas drove a compact eggshell of a Mazda where the Hitachiins' son, who went to a posh prep school, would have had an armored limousine. That's why HE was alive and THEY were dead. An eddy of anger stirred in the pit of Kaoru's stomach.

But it didn't matter. Being angry would not bring them back, because they were gone. Irreversibly gone. As she stood and looked at them from across the room, they seemed like mere effigies of her parents. But as she came closer she saw that there was no denying it - it was definitely them. They were still and lifeless, and their skin had an irreversible dullness about it. The blood and dirt had been cleaned away from their faces, but streaks of her mother's eyeshadow remained smeared across her temple - the purple shade she had was so convinced became her no matter how much Kaoru had tried to reason with her over the years. And her father, though both his eyes were swollen shut, had died with a smile on his face - the same unmistakeable, slightly crooked smile he gave Kaoru whenever he got a call from school about her antics, but would tell her in confidence that he still thought she was a good kid.

Yes, he had died with a smile, but he would never smile again. He would never smile at her as he told her to catch up and stop being a sissy when the three of them hiked up mountains around Tokyo to take in views of the city. He would never smile and hum opera arias as he cooked somen, his specialty, on hot summer days. And mom would never smile either as she watched her favorite Edo-era costume dramas and poured Kaoru a glass of watered-down Umeshu with Saturday dinner. They'd never smile as they took pictures of her during her graduation ceremony - that is, if she ever WERE to graduate and not get expelled. They'd never smile and wave in the rear view mirror as she drove away on her honeymoon - assuming she WERE to get married one day, which she doubted. Truth be told, Kaoru had always doubted that the things her parents had wanted for her would happen - she simply could not imagine them for herself. But now that she knew her parents would never get their wish, she regretted things she had never been sure she wanted. Because they had loved her. She was not their blood, but they'd loved her complete with all her flaws, her delinquent antics, and her odd looks, which made people continuously peg her as either an Ainu extract or a foreigner. She had not always taken the time to thank them and to tell them that she felt the same, but she knew it. And she was sure that she would never be loved that way again.

She felt something rupture inside her as she began to cry. She cried for a long time.

…

The hospital had separate "serenity" rooms for families of patients who were in a bad way, and Kaoru was sitting on the couch in one of them. Yuzuha and Yuzuke had followed her, having relocated from the emergency room waiting area, and sat quietly at a polite distance. They were indeed not going anywhere - both had pulled out their phones and tablets, and seemed to be firing off emails and doing whatever work they could given the circumstances.

Several hours had passed and Kaoru's eyes had run out of tears, but she still felt ragged and raw. Her face stung as the salt dried and pulled the skin together, and she hiccuped violently from time to time. Yuzuha had brought her a cup of water, which Kaoru still clutched in her hands, and placed a blanket around her shoulders. Kaoru had noticed that she still hadn't removed her gloves, and that her hands were childishly small.

"You're probably feeling a lot of things you can't process right now, Kaoru," Yuzuha had said, kneeling down so she could catch the girl's eyes. "But we're here for you. You don't have to go it alone. Anything we can do to help, we'll gladly do. Just let us know."

Anything. Yes, anything. That was what they all said - that if there was anything they could do to help… But what could anyone do? They couldn't turn back the clock. They couldn't undo what happened. Life as she knew it had been abruptly cancelled, but who - except her - would realistically be able to do what it took to build a new one? Where would she even start? It was all so heavy. And if she had always felt a little lonely, the loneliness was now a deep, dark ocean, with miles and miles of water overhead. All she wanted was bury herself in the sand like a stingray and watch the currents of life pass her by.

And yet, it was odd, wasn't it? That life was indeed as unpredictable and erratic as the fate of each of the molecules of water in the ocean. One moment you think you'll be having dinner with your parents, and the next you hear that they're gone forever. And yet somehow that day's accident had brought her face to face with people who claimed that their adopted son looked just like her. As far as coincidences went, it was a pretty big one. It if were really true - and they had not created a fake picture and a fake facebook (tm) page for some nefarious purpose - that would mean that she had a brother, and at some point they had gotten separated and adopted by different families. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to latch onto - after all, even if they did share DNA, who knew if they'd have anything in common after fifteen years apart? What would they even say to each other? And yet, given the alternative, given the vortex of the last few hours…

"Mrs. Hitachiin?" Kaoru said. The woman had introduced herself as Yuzuha as if she expected Kaoru to call her that, but the girl still felt more than a little uncomfortable doing so. "So your son is… my brother, is that right?"

"Yes. You're fifteen, born on June 9, right?"

"Yes…"

"Then he's your twin brother."

Kaoru paused, trying to think of the right way to phrase her question.

"Did you ever… know that I existed?"

"No, Kaoru, we did not - until today. I just had my attorney look you up - I'm sorry. It seems you must have been adopted first. When we got there, there was only Hikaru, and we opted not to know anything about his family. Although… Perhaps we should have." She looked down at her tablet, almost apologetically.

Kaoru wondered if Yuzuha simply felt sorry for her because she'd been tricked out of a life of luxury. Was this why she was being so kind? But Kaoru decided it didn't matter - she would probably never know for sure, anyway.

"What is… Hikaru like?" she asked.

Yuzuha looked up and Kaoru thought she saw a shadow of tenderness tinged with sadness run across the woman's eyes.

"You know, he's always been a good boy. Boys will be boys, of course, and we've had our share of the usual with him, but overall Yuzuke and I have been very blessed. Although…" - she paused to ponder - "He's always looked a little sad when he thought no one was looking. And he's never been passionate about anything. He always seemed to approach life like he was going through the motions."

Kaoru felt like someone had sliced her right down the chest. She was just about to reply when a doctor knocked on the half-open door. He was not the doctor who had come to speak to Kaoru about her parents, but one she had not seen before.

"Mr. and Mrs. Hitachiin?" he said. "Would you like to see your son now?" His eyes darted to Kaoru, and it seemed like he assumed that she, too, was family given how much she resembled the patient.

Yuzuha rose and Yuzuke did the same almost instantly. The woman let her tablet drop to the chair where she had been sitting.

"How is he?" she asked almost too quickly, letting her mask of regal composure slip a bit.

"He hasn't woken up yet, but there should be no lasting damage from the brain bleed, and he's regaining organ function," the doctor said.

Kaoru saw Yuzuha's frame visibly collapse in relief as Yuzuke took her hand right on cue.

"He'd doing much better," the doctor added.

"Oh, goodness, thank you." Yuzuha seemed to be doing her utmost to repress the urge to run to the man and cover his face with kisses.

"If you'd like to see him, you can," the physician said with a civil smile.

"Of course, of course." Yuzuha waved her hand to motion both her husband and Kaoru to follow her.

"You… want me to come too?" Kaoru asked uncertainly, getting up.

"Yes, of course." Yuzuha took her by the shoulder and steered her out the door and down the hallway as they followed the doctor.

"But, but, but" - Kaoru protested - "What if he wakes up and sees me?" She remembered the way her stomach had flipped when she first saw Hikaru's picture, and could not begin to imagine what it would feel like to see a real person who looked like a mirror image of yourself. What if Hikaru woke up, saw her, and the shock sent him right back into a coma?

"If he shows signs of waking up, you can step behind the curtain," Yuzuha replied.

…

Kaoru paused in front of the door to the hospital room, nodding at Yuzuha and Yuzuke to indicate that she'd join them when she was ready.

She stared at the door that was open a crack, and did her best to quell the flutters in her stomach. Things were moving far too fast, and her brain - bruised and bleeding as if it, too, had been totaled in the five-car pileup - was still working overtime to catch up. First she loses her parents. Then she learns she has a twin brother. And then she learns that, just like her, he had always been a little sad. It seemed that they had at least one thing in common after all, and it was almost too much to fathom.

A part of her refused to believe it. But another part of her was sending desperate signals, deploying its full, wordless, primal arsenal, even as the familiar spot between her ribs twisted and writhed far harder than it ever done before. And yet another part of her was very afraid of what she might find beyond that door. She could not possibly handle another disappointment that day. What if the doctor had been wrong, and she would find out she had a brother only to get there in time to watch him die? Or worse, what if he wanted nothing to do with her, and felt nothing for her?

She pushed open the door.

….

Hikaru was floating atop a dark ocean, and above him lay a night sky that was just as deep and pitch-black. He felt peaceful. With a far corner of his mind, he found himself thinking that he would not mind going on like that even as the world clattered and lumbered along somewhere very far away. He'd always lived with a strange feeling of detachment, as if he wouldn't have cared if it all disappeared. There had always been two types of people in the world: him and everyone else. The latter sort had never been of much import to Hikaru, and much of the time the feeling was mutual. The Host Club had made things a little better, but not by much. Being fawned over by girls stroked his ego, but in the end it was only another way to pass the time. The last thing he could remember as gravity shifted and an airbag hit him in the face, smelling of burnt rubber cupcakes, was that all people really did in this life was wait for the day of judgment. What did it matter when exactly it would come?

And then a strange being appeared out of the darkness. The person had his face, except the hair was pulled back and the bangs were cut straight across the forehead. And they - or she, it would seem - had small hillocks on her chest, perhaps the only thing that pegged her as a female.

But most of all it was the face that burned into his consciousness. It expressed all the pain and loneliness he always felt but never showed, and sent electricity through his brain and spinal cord. The odd being mouthed something, stretching out a hand - only to vanish again.

"Wait… what?!" he screamed. He wanted to scramble up and chase after her and shout "wait, come back here - who are you, and why are you so sad?" But no matter how much he tried to thrash his limbs, he could not feel them, and the darkness only grew deeper.

Still, the damage was done. Even as he floated atop the deep, dark ocean, he felt like he had been jolted awake, never to sleep again.

…

Yuzuha and Yuzuke were standing by the side of the bed, and the husband was holding the wife by the shoulders as the two gazed in the same direction.

Seeing her parents bruised and lifeless had felt like getting shot, and Kaoru was almost sure she would be able to handle anything after that. But when her gaze fell to the bed, her knees nearly bucked.

It was like looking in a mirror to discover your face bruised and lacerated. But far more shocking was that the boy named Hikaru really wasn't just a collection of pixels on a screen. He was a being of flesh and blood that ran through bluish veins just under his skin's translucent surface. And though he was wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, his chest was rising and falling underneath even as a machine echoed his heartbeat with punctuated beeps. Yuzuha's hands were molded around one of his.

Kaoru crossed the room and stood by the side of the bed opposite Yuzuha and Yuzuke. Even as the boy slept, there was something melancholy and heartbreakingly stoic about the line of his eyebrows and the angle of his jaw. His eyes were nearly closed, but when she saw a faint sliver of hazel-colored iris it felt like someone had sliced her right down the chest again. The sobs came on their own accord as she moved the blanket and took the boy's other hand.

She still could not believe it. She felt weightless again, and had to focus her eyes on the IV machine across the bed to keep her head from reeling. Because the feeling that she had been truly unprepared for was the… absence of a feeling. For the first time ever, the nagging tug of loneliness under her ribs was gone. Completely. As if it had burned itself out with wordless smoke signals when she was standing outside the door. No, rather, it was as if it had never been there. For once, nothing and no one was missing. Everything was just where it belonged - and after a life of emptiness it was almost too much to handle.

Hikaru, please… She still could not bear to call him brother, not even to herself. A brother was someone you were acquainted with through and through, someone who had always been there - but the feeling she had? If she didn't know better, she would have thought that this is what people meant when they said that finding your soul mate made you feel whole.

Hikaru… Don't die. Please. Wake up. Whatever you're sad about, we can be sad together. Please don't leave me when I've only just found you.

She stood there, wheezing barely audibly, for a few moments. Hot tears were spilling down her cheeks, and they stung the skin around her eyes, already irritated by the salt from a few hours ago. She squeezed the boy's hand, and though it might have been her imagination, for a moment it felt like he was squeezing back.

And then his eyes flickered open.


	3. Hikaru's Sister

When Hikaru's eyes began to flicker open, Kaoru let go of his hand like she had been scalded and backed away, nearly stumbling, until she was behind the curtain that divided the room. Although nobody had expected Hikaru to wake so soon or so suddenly, they had all agreed that it would not be wise for him to see a mirror image of himself as he was coming out of a coma. As a consequence, when the contours of the room came into focus, Hikaru found himself in the most unremarkable of hospital beds, with his parents standing over him, a forgettable watercolor print on the wall opposite, and the neon lights of the city outside the window flickering like Christmas.

"Hikaru! Sweetie! You're awake!" Yuzuha, who had made every effort to keep a brave face over the last few hours, let her eyes melt and overflow over her cheeks as she clasped her son's hand tighter. Yuzuke, wordless and calm as ever, extended his hand to run it over Hikaru's temple and cheek. The boy saw that his father's eyes, too, were moist.

Of course. It had all been a dream. His heart was still fluttering, but the vision of a few moments ago was fading quickly, forced out by the dull, muted light of the room. For a moment, he had thought he had found an impetus, a purpose - to chase after the strange girl and find out at all costs who she was and why she was sad. But now all he felt was a void - a dull, oppressive ache from the pit of his stomach to the crown of his head, and a weakness that made his limbs feel like they weighed a thousand pounds each.

"Hey, mom… dad…" He turned his face into Yuzuke's touch and let his lips drift into a small melancholy smile. He did not have the strength to smile in his usual brilliant, Hollywood way - and why would he? If now was not the time to look as he felt, when would it ever be? The recent events were coming back to him - the screech of tires, the burnt rubber cupcakes, the wind that got knocked out of him, and then the darkness.

"Hikaru, darling," said Yuzuha, who had regained a semblance of composure even though she still held on Hikaru for dear life with one hand and to her packet of tissues with the other. "There was a car crash, but you're ALIVE, and the doctors say you'll be FINE."

"How are you feeling, son?" asked Yuzuke.

"Like a truck drove over me. But otherwise okay." Hikaru gave a sterile chuckle.

"Well, looks like the sense of humor is intact." Yuzuke allowed himself a small grin as he gently ruffled his son's hair.

Hikaru's sense of humor was intact indeed - or rather, his favorite defense mechanism was. Because as he looked back at their tearful, ecstatic faces he could not help but realize, for the umpteenth time, that there HAD to be something wrong with him. True, every inch of his body felt battered and bruised - but there he was, in the company of loved ones, having escaped with his life. And yet it was almost as if he had been… disappointed to wake up. As if the world, once again, held nothing or promise or interest. And his parents - they had always been good parents, and done their best for him, but they, too, were their old selves: trying too hard to put a good face on things as they played at being a Happy Family. From the time he had first come to notice he was different - different from them, and different from everybody - they had tried harder and harder every day. But it was never any use. The more they tried, the deeper he sank into his own world, feeling guiltier by the day. And it seemed today would be no different. Waking up from a coma had not made for any sort of transcendent experience.

In fact, the experience was quickly made even less transcendent by what seemed like fifty doctors and nurses, who crowded into the room in rapid succession minutes after he woke up. There was a flurry of taking down vital signs, testing reflexes and eye movements, and asking him what he thought the date was, along with his name and that of the prime minister. A half an hour must have passed before the rigamarole that apparently accompanied coming out of a coma came to an end, and Hikaru was allowed to rest. He had been lying back peacefully against the pillows, resting everything including his eyes, when Yuzuha finally hazarded to pop the question.

"Hikaru, are you tired? Are you up for meeting someone?"

"Meeting someone? Who?" Who else could there BE? - he thought - opening his eyes and scanning the room for signs of another visitor, not a bit apprehensively. - And what could they WANT? They weren't going to ask him again to reel off as many animals as he could in a minute because it was an oh-so-critical test of mental condition?

"Well, this is a bit of a recent development," Yuzuha said, "But you've got a sister."

"A…. sister?" Hikaru made a move to push himself up with his elbows in surprise, and Yuzuke put a hand on his shoulder. "Mom, you're not… Are you?" For a second, his world-weariness was knocked clean out of his head by the thought of his parents still doing something he didn't want to imagine.

"No, Hikaru," Yuzuha laughed. "It turns out you've got a sister who's your age - in fact, she's your twin."

"A-a- a TWIN sister?" Hikaru made another move to sit up again, and this time Yuzuke let him shift a few inches up on the bed.

The girl. In the coma dream. With his face. No… It couldn't possibly… His SISTER? He had a… SISTER?

"Yes," his mother said. "We just met her today, in this hospital. Quite by chance."

A sister. All his life, he had thought he was the only person like himself, and now it turns out not to be true - there was someone just like him all along. It was as if the whole world was had been turned on its head.

"Well, where is she? Is she okay? Can I see her?" Hikaru felt like he'd been stricken by lighting, and was still afraid to believe it. He half-expected both parents to shout "psych!" at any moment, for bright stage-lights to come on, and for the hospital room to turn into the set of a ridiculous reality show.

"She's perfectly fine. And yes, you can see her," Yuzuha replied. "Although, fair warning - when I say she's your twin, I mean she's the exact, spitting image of you." She cast a hesitant glance at her son, but his expression was still the same blend of rapt expectation and half-disbelief. "Kaoru, will you come in here?" she called.

A girl stepped around the curtain that divided the room. Hikaru's jaw fell open, and he was fairly sure his eyes would have popped out if they were not attached.

It was Her. There were absolutely, positively no two ways about it. Straight-cut bangs and bee-sting breasts and all.

It really was like looking in a mirror. They even had nearly the same build, as she was tall for a girl, thin like a model and with hardly a curve under the light green track suit that had seen better days. The face and tawny eyes - which he just managed to catch - were his as well, though she had averted them quickly and was looking to the floor, visibly nervous as she tugged the long tress of hair that hung forward over her shoulder and reached nearly to her waist.

Yuzuha motioned the girl to come over and Hikaru made another attempt to sit up, this time succeeding in getting vertical.

"Hello, Hikaru." The girl bowed her head and extended a hand, still holding on to her hair with the other as if it were a lifeline. "I'm Kaoru. How are you feeling?"

If she was nervous, the hand on her hair and her eyes were the only parts of her that showed it; her voice was definitely not his, but still sounded like that of a boy just waking up, and had something defenselessly, adolescently intimate about it. He clasped her hand, and almost wanted to take it in both of his to make assurance double-sure that she wasn't an apparition that would slip away. But Yuzuha was still holding on to his other hand rather firmly, and at the end of the day, it didn't matter. Kaoru was definitely real, and very warm - in fact, she seemed to radiate heat as the blood pumped through her fingertips.

"Kaoru…" He repeated, almost to himself, turning the word over with his tongue and struggling to connect the concept to reality. It was still almost too much to believe, and in another life he might have felt fragmented and robbed to suddenly learn that someone had been walking around with his face and - nearly - his body for the better part of fifteen years. But that was in another life. In this one, it suddenly felt like too many things had fallen into place.

"What's your favorite fragrance, Kaoru*?" he asked, looking up winsomely and hoping that the wordplay would break the ice and hide the fact that his heart was breaking in the best, most beautiful of ways.

(*Kaoru means "fragrance.")

"Uh… I don't know." He had succeeded - she cocked an eyebrow and looked up as she answered. "I've never really thought about it. Lavender, maybe?" Their eyes met for the first time after that fleeting moment after she stepped around the curtain but before she looked down, and Hikaru saw a shard of sadness flicker in her eyes even as she made a brave attempt to smile.

"So you're my sister…"

"It seems so, yes." The girl's smile grew a touch more genuine.

"My little sister." He toyed with her hand, turning it over and running the tips of his fingers down hers. He could not help thinking that he probably still looked like a child on Christmas who had seen Santa Claus, but found himself caring very little. "I've always wanted a little sister. Where have you been all these years, Kaoru? Why have you left me alone? You have no idea how much I suffered."

It seemed Hikaru was the clever, cheeky sort, and Kaoru could not help but feel a bit buoyed up by the sentiment. One of them, at the very least, would not need to rifle through pockets for something to say.

"How do you know I'm your little sister?" She looked across the bed at Yuzuha. "We don't know who came out first… Or do we?"

The woman had just finished wiping away a furtive tear, and her hand was clasping her husband's.

"No, you're right: we don't know that much," she affirmed.

"Well, the brother always protects his sister. Therefore, you're my little sister," Hikaru declared.

"I appreciate the sentiment," Kaoru replied, still smiling as her eyes softened, "But I don't think I need anyone to protect me." In a hospital bed, just awoken from a coma, and already raring to rescue someone - she thought. It was almost comical, though it made a part of her uncomfortably warm inside.

"Well, alright, Miss Independent" - Hikaru laughed - "But don't come crying to me when something bad happens."

Kaoru's smile faded.

"Oh… Oh, no… Kaoru, what's wrong? Did I say something I shouldn't have?…"

Kaoru said nothing.

"Hikaru," Yuzuha said finally, when it became clear that an answer was not forthcoming from Kaoru herself. "Kaoru's parents were in the same accident as you."

"Oh…"

"They didn't make it."

Hikaru pulled his hand away from his mother's and clasped Kaoru's in both of his. Kaoru's face was devoid of expression and she hid her eyes again. If she did not pull away, it seemed to be only because she'd been instantly drained of all life.

"Kaoru, I'm so… sorry." He desperately searched his mind for something less banal and less impotent to say, but the neurons, still sluggish from the contusion, misfired again and again. "Were they…?"

"No. They weren't." Kaoru's voice was wooden. "I was adopted too. But it doesn't matter."

She was right. It didn't. Hikaru let the hand, clasped in both of his, fall to the bedcovers. It all made sense now. Or rather, it was still bizarre that he had dreamed her up - accurately to a T - before he knew she existed, but she HAD been sad in the dream, and she was sad now, and it made perfect sense why. An electric shock shot down his spine again, as if every neuron that misfired before hit its mark at the same time. Suddenly, the colors of the lackluster picture on the wall grew shades more vibrant, and the tired green of Kaoru's hoodie reminded him of delicious matcha flavored ice cream on a summer day.

"Kaoru… I'm really, really sorry," he repeated. "And I'm sorry for what I said… You can come to me any time." He picked up her hand again for emphasis, and had raised it halfway to his face before he caught himself. "I really want you to, okay?"

Please, Kaoru, he wanted to plead. Dear, sweet Kaoru - because she WAS sweet. She could not have been anything but. His sister might have had the angular figure of a man and she might have walked like a man, with none of the mincing, pigeon-toed cutesiness that girls liked to adopt, but there was something… soft about her. Something delicate and submissive in the way she kept lowering her eyes and let her hand rest in his. And the way her shoulders - otherwise stately like a queen's - slumped a little when he touched her. It made him want to pull her into the bed next to him and wrap his arms around her to hide her from the world, wires and IVs and the narrow space be damned.

All my life, I felt like I had no purpose. But now I want to spend every minute of every day trying to be the best brother in the world for you. And I'll be your mother and your father too, if that's what it takes. I'll be your anything, just to make you smile. He still held her hand, and the heart rate monitor had begun - traitorously - to echo the violence of his heartbeat, even as Kaoru showed no signs of answering.

The truth was, she could not have answered even if she wanted to. She felt… tired - more tired than she had ever been in her life, and even she had been surprised by how quickly it came on. The moment Yuzuha had begun to speak for her, Kaoru felt like she'd fallen backwards into an abyss. Her head had begun to hurt abruptly, a heaviness spread through her limbs, and she found she could barely keep her eyes open, much less put words to meaning.

Her last thought was that if she wasn't careful she would topple over backwards, but Yuzuke's hand on her shoulder came to the rescue.

"Son, I think Kaoru needs to get some rest. And so do you. You both had a long day."

"N-no…" Hikaru's eyes shot to his father with a pleading expression.

"Kaoru can come back tomorrow, and you can spend more time getting to know each other then."

"Your father's right, Hikaru," Yuzuha added from across the bed with smile, getting up to gently peel Kaoru's hand away from both of Hikaru's. "It's late, and I think we've all had enough excitement for one day. Kaoru - are you feeling okay?"

Hikaru watched helplessly as his parents spirited Kaoru away - it was only a few feet to the other side of the room to work out logistics, but it didn't matter. It still felt he'd been punched in the chest, and was adrift again on top of the dark ocean. He wanted to get up and stop them, to pull Kaoru back - even as she was, an effigy of herself clearly nodding off as she stood - but his limbs first refused to obey him, and then a sharp pain sent white sparks through his brain as he tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed.

"Hikaru!" His mother had materialized back at his side in a flash. "Hikaru, sweetie, calm down. Kaoru's not going far. Your dad's just going to take her to our house so she can get some sleep. She'll come back tomorrow. And I'll stay here with you so you don't have to be alone."

Hikaru settled back against the pillows. There was still a dull pulling in his chest, even as Yuzuha rubbed comforting circles into his chest and forearm, and even as his father and Kaoru came back to say goodnight. Kaoru's eyes were tired, and still a little sad, and it made Hikaru want to take her hand again. But Yuzuke was already conducting her away to the door - and as he did so, Hikaru had the distinct feeling that the colors of the world had followed her, draining from the forgettable watercolor, the walls, and his mother's suit one by one until they were all gone, and the world was as monochrome as could be.


	4. The House of Hitachiin

Kaoru opened her eyes, and as the feeling returned to her limbs her first thought was that a blizzard had come in the night and buried her in a snowdrift. Her body was folded into a bed with covers deeper and heavier than any she had felt before. Fatigue still clung to her body like cobwebs, and as she stretched out her limbs they did not reach to the ends of the mattress.

The second thing she noticed was the silence. At home, mornings had a standard soundtrack: quite apart from the fact that she usually woke to her mother screaming that breakfast was ready, there was also the spirited choir of birds outside her window, the barking of neighborhood dogs, and the hum of the freeway that she'd conditioned herself to think was the ocean. If Kaoru woke up later on a weekend, she'd hear young schoolchildren playing in the street - or a lawnmower, or gossiping housewives, or someone watching the news with the window open. In short, there was always something to reassure her that the world - however boring it might have seemed at times - was already busy winding its spring by the time she opened her eyes. Yet now there was nothing but silence, as if someone had clicked off the TV and severed all the cables.

Where was she, anyway? At home, the window was steps away from her bed and faced east, so every morning she woke in a flood of sunshine. But not today - today, the window was a good twenty feet away, the drapes almost completely shut and admitting only a tiny sliver of daylight. The walls, done up in muted green wallpaper, did not look familiar, and the ceiling was higher than any she had seen before, making the room seem even more cavernous. She raked her brain, and was quick to regret it: as the previous night's events began to take shape, she wanted nothing more than to burrow under the covers and sleep forever.

In fact, she was about to do just that when she heard a knock on the door.

"Yes? Come in," Kaoru mumbled, sitting up with a groan.

The door opened to reveal a young woman with comely features, two large ponytails, and wearing a getup so odd it made Kaoru momentarily forget her determination to fall asleep forever. If she didn't know better, she would have wondered if the woman was cosplaying as a maid for the purposes of some schlocky period drama - or a hentai.

"Good morning, Miss Suzumiya," the woman said with a bow and a brilliant smile that may have worked equally well for a model presenting wares in a showroom. "I'm Toroko, and I'll be your maid while you're staying here. Is there anything I can help you with this morning?"

"Uhh…"

So, ridiculous as her choice of clothing was, she wasn't cosplaying - she really was a maid. Kaoru let herself sink a little into the oversized, downy mattress. It made sense - if these Hitachiins were the same family that ran the successful luxury clothing brand, they would certainly be able to afford servants. But she never would have guessed that a real maid's outfit would look quite so much like something out of a costume shop, complete with flared skirt and ruffled suspenders that ended with tiny wings over the shoulders? And the idea of having a personal assistant made her feel almost ashamed of herself. After all, what kinds of things were maids supposed to do, exactly?

"Would you like breakfast? Or coffee? I can also draw you a bath and bring you some clothes to change into, if you feel so inclined," Toroko volunteered smilingly, ever the trade-show hostess listing the features of a new state-of-the-art washing machine.

"Breakfast sounds good."

"Good, what would you like?" Toroko's voice grew more chipper still - which Kaoru had not thought was possible.

"Uh… toast?" Ever since age five, Kaoru's favorite breakfast food, embarrassingly enough, was toasted shokupan: the white, processed sandwich bread ubiquitous to every supermarket and convenient store - though that did not make it taste any less like the food of angels. If she had to stay awake, she thought, a slice of shokupan with butter and jam might be just the thing to help her feel like the world had not ended.

"Will that be French toast or regular? And would you like french bread, whole wheat, rye, pumpernickel, ciabatta, or seven-grain?"

Kaoru's mouth fell open. She had never even heard of seven-grain bread. Come to think of it, she could barely list seven varieties of grain.

"Do you have… shokupan?"

"I'm sorry, we don't." - Toroko's winning attitude sank a notch, but only for a moment. "We can get some, though."

They didn't have... shokupan? Oh well, figures - Kaoru thought. Shokupan was a budget item after all.

"Would you like jam with that? We've got apple, lingonberry, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, boysenberry, mulberry, gooseberry, cranberry, mandarin orange, concord grape, muscat grape, rhubarb, cherry, litchi, papaya, guava, mango-"

What was this woman - a walking, talking menu? Kaoru found herself wondering how much Toroko had been paid to memorize what seemed like the entire contents of the Hitachiins' apparently vast pantry. And… Boysenberry?

"Boysenberry," Kaoru replied, suddenly feeling like she wouldn't mind discovering America that day.

Toroko smiled indulgently, as if to indicate that her mistress-in-training was progressing well.

"Butter with that?"

"Yes, please." And please , God, don't let her ask me if I want it pre-spread on my toast.

"And would you care for tea or coffee? We've got oolong, black, green, white, red for tea, and for coffee we've got orange and yellow Bourbon, pacas, blue mountain, catuai, french mission, java-"

"Toroko - " Kaoru interrupted the maid with her best attempt at a nonchalant smile given the circumstances. "Do I look like someone who knows what all of those are?"

The young woman paused, hesitating, her professional demeanor clearly at odds with her desire to volunteer a truthful - if not quite on-topic opinion of what she thought Kaoru looked like.

"Just… Get me whatever Hikaru likes."

"Very well, Miss Suzumiya."

Toroko gave a small bow. The name of the elephant in the room had somehow managed to diffuse the situation: including that of Kaoru's source of caffeine for the day.

"Will you be having that in bed, at the table" - the maid gestured to a table by the window - "Or downstairs in the morning room?"

Kaoru was silent for a moment. It was still heartbreakingly hard to believe that instead of her mother shouting at the top of her lungs that it was time to get going, she had woken up to find THIS crazy creature. More than that - that she might never hear her mother shouting anything at all, ever again. Unless - unless it had all been a dream, and she was still dreaming and had made it all up: the maid Toroko and her improbable costume, the cavernous room, Yuzuha and Yuzuke, and even Hikaru last night, who had looked as happy as a child on Christmas morning to meet her, and so stricken when she was taken away. Yes, her sleeping mind probably HAD made it all up, because no self-respecting orphanage would separate twins, would it? And she would wake up soon, tell her parents about it over breakfast, and the three of them would have a good laugh about it.

"Downstairs," Kaoru said emphatically.

After all, whether or not this was a dream, her father would not want her to be a lazybones.

…

Kaoru sat in the morning room, a verandah with three walls comprised entirely of French windows that opened up to the garden. She had gotten out of bed, sure enough, charged with determination to view it all as a dream until further notice. But as she followed the maid downstairs she felt like she was sinking deeper into a bog, her limbs growing heavier and heavier. Any minute now, the lights would fade and the thick, the dark waters would close over her head, and she would come to lie with the dinosaurs, her body sending slow bubbles to the surface until the millenia turned her into a lump of coal. By the time she had made it to breakfast, she had hardly enough energy to keep herself from slumping over, and was staring dejectedly out the window.

The Hitachiins had a real garden - nothing like the plot of land a hundred feet square where she and her father would plant vegetables in the spring, even as mother acted the benevolent yet strict foreman. Here, there were rose bushes as tall as people, and a few wrought-iron benches, and paths that wound around the flowerbeds. The sound of a pair of clippers - an invisible gardener trimming the verge - floated into room, but otherwise the house was as silent as ever. Kaoru wondered detachedly where the Hitachiins lived exactly, that they had access to enough space and sound isolation to make being home feel like you'd fallen off the face of the earth.

In fact, even Toroko - when she was not asking how she could be of assistance and reeling off long lists with a doll-faced smile - was silent as a ghost, and never spoke unless spoken to. The maid had just brewed some tea in a cast-iron pot and poured it into a cup so delicate Kaoru was afraid to touch it. She had then stepped back without a word and folded folded her hands, evidently awaiting further instructions. It was almost enough to drive Kaoru distracted.

It still didn't compute - her mind nagged against the backdrop of deafening silence. How she, Kaoru, had gotten there. How there were too many things to name would never happen again. And how quickly the future had become a blank slate in a gray, morose sort of way, and how she would soon have to make decisions whose import she might not comprehend for many weeks and months. Kaoru suddenly found herself feeling so sorry for herself it was difficult to breathe.

"Toroko?" Kaoru made a willful effort to straighten up - it was either that, or give up on everything and everyone and fall face-first into her teacup. "Where are we, exactly? I mean, what part of Tokyo?" At least - she assumed it was Tokyo. She had fallen asleep in the car the night before.

"Shirokanedai district, Minato ward," the maid answered without skipping a beat.

Karou was a touch surprised. She knew Shirokanedai as the home of a famous strip of boutiques called Platinum Street, and she knew it was a place where many rich people had villas, but to the best of her knowledge it really wasn't that FAR from everything. How on earth was it so quiet?

"And what's supposed to happen today?"

"Mrs. Hitachiin will come back in the late afternoon and the two of you will visit Mr. Hikaru in the hospital. That is, unless you want to take a car and see him yourself. I can also give you a tour of the house and grounds, if you like."

Kaoru looked down at her plate, rimmed in deep blue and silver, and suddenly had no appetite for shokupan. Hospitals? Cars? A part of her was almost positive she never wanted to see a hospital or a car ever again. And Hikaru? It was hard to say no to seeing someone who had been as keen as a Golden Retriever to meet her, but in a hospital room? Like the one where her parents had been, bruised and covered in sheets, and with dirt washed away hastily from their faces? She would probably end up going with Yuzuha later whether she liked it or not, but for the time being some things were better left buried.

Kaoru got up and pushed the plate away from her.

"Why don't you show me around, Toroko?" she said. "I'm really sorry you had to go to all the trouble, but I'm not hungry anymore."

…

The house was indeed a villa, and the nearest thing she could compare it to was a Beverly Hills mansion in a Hollywood movie. The first floor had to have had at least twelve rooms that seemed to have no specific purpose except to "entertain," and to store various curiosities that Yuzuha and Yuzuke had collected over the course of their travels - from medieval Belgian tapestries to Chinese turtle dragons, which seemed to be Yuzuha's favorite. The maze of rooms all converged on an airy sitting-room that spanned two stories, with lamps hanging on wires so thin they looked like they were floating, and furniture so white Kaoru wondered why another bothered. A corner of the room was devoted entirely to a small forest of bamboo with soft stools for reflection, and one wall made almost entirely of glass, opening up into yet another "garden" - this one complete with a pool, a lawn, and a skyline beyond that looked like a theatre backdrop.

When they stepped outside, Kaoru looked at her reflection in the water and saw an airplane traverse the sky past her head - but it, too, was eerily quiet. It was a brilliantly warm day in March, with shards of sunshine dancing atop the water - a bright, incongruous sort of blue seen in travel brochures and children's watercolors.

"And over there, we've got tennis courts, a basketball court, and a croquet lawn," Toroko was saying, having transformed into a hybrid of a real estate agent and a museum tourguide.

"You guys… have a basketball court?"

"Most certainly."

Toroko conducted her down a path and sure enough, there it was, past the tennis court and netted off from the rest of the lawn. Not just a plot of concrete with a wire hoop like so many playgrounds and schools had, and as far a cry from a hoop affixed over a driveway as Kaoru could imagine. Rather, the concrete had hardly any wear, and the lines were crisp, a perfect mini version of a real thing. And there were two baskets, not just one, perfect for a game of three on three - or even more. It was the first thing that, over the last twenty-four hours, had truly taken her breath away in a good way, and Kaoru stood looking at it until the sun began to bake on the bridge of her nose and on her cheeks.

"Does somebody… play?" she asked breathlessly, almost afraid to guess what other bizarre coincidences her acquaintance with Hikaru would bring her face to face with.

"No, not anymore. Mr. Hikaru had a phase, and he had some friends who enjoyed it, but it's been a few years."

"What other… phases had Hikaru had?"

"Oh, in the time I've been here, you name it, he's tried it," Toroko let her tone grow a touch a touch affectionate, making Kaoru wonder if the maid might have had a the secret fondness for Hikaru not unlike that of a big sister. After all, Toroko could not have been much older than twenty.

"Baseball, dressage, volleyball, you name it," the maid continued. "He wasn't half-bad at many of them either - he even won a few regional championships in golf. But it seemed like he was always searching for the next thing."

She paused, pressing her lips, and looking down, as if suddenly wondering if she'd said too much for her station.

...

Kaoru was not sure why, but Toroko's coming alive when asked directly about Hikaru had made a sick feeling not unlike vertigo rise in her stomach. She dismissed the maid and set to wandering the upper floors of the house by herself, pondering the day's events.

The Hitachiins - and the bits and pieces she had seen of their life - were for the moment a topic far less painful than cars and hospitals. But here, too, there were many unanswered questions that made her feel queasy. For instance, if Hikaru had a lot of phases, could it be that the idea of a little sister, which he had taken to so much, would also prove to be a phase, and he would discard her as he did the basketball court when he discovered they had nothing to truly tie them together? What if Yuzuha and Yuzuke, too, were given to "phases"? The very rich seemed to be an entirely different animal, if their houses were any indication. In fact, they seemed hardly real, given how quickly they could make things happen: how quickly Yuzuha had been able to find out everything about Kaoru from her lawyer, and how quickly Toroko had gotten her hands on convenient store bread even though there was none in the pantry. Kaoru still found it hard to trust them, even though they had treated her as one of their own.

She paused in front of a door that was half-open, but the glimpse of a guitar and a teenage mess strewn across the carpet drew her in almost in spite of herself.

It was Hikaru's room. She did not even need the large framed calligraphy piece on the wall featuring his name to tell her that. From the threshold, it was not unlike the one she had slept in - in fact, it was almost identical, except far more full of… all kinds of things. The wall opposite the bed was filled with a big-screen TV and a video game console; the walls were covered with shelves. Some were full of books, DVDs and games; others were filled photographs and memorabilia under glass. And Toroko had not lied, either - every inch of the room was a testament to just what she said: that Hikaru seemed to have tried everything once. In addition to the guitar, there was also a trombone, a cello in a case, board games and strategy games of every breed, and even a marble chess table with wrought wooden legs. There was also a low table devoted entirely to a veritable Noah's Ark of origami animals, an entire shelf of frog figurines, a corner devoted to model airplanes and U-boats, three baseball mitts stuffed into various cracks, a cricket bat in a corner, kendo gear, a basketball, stray shin guards for soccer, and a bag of golf clubs looking very forlorn under the bed. And it seemed like the last time he had been home, Hikaru had left his room in a big hurry and had thrown cosplay clothes all over the floor.

But far more interesting was the wall of shelves filled with photographs, framed and under glass alongside various mementos. Her feet carried her over to look more closely on their own accord, even though she knew all too well how wrong it was for her to be there. After all, the room's owner had met her for all of ten minutes, and was recovering in a hospital after a close brush with death. And yet…

For a fifteen year old, Hikaru was certainly well-traveled. He seemed to have gone to see the Great Wall of China when he was around two, and was standing between his parents on it, waving. He had also been to France on an elementary school trip - Kaoru's eyes widened when she realized this - and also to Macchu Picchu, to the Grand Canyon, to the fairytale castle in Germany, and to what looked like Disney World - the one in the States, not Tokyo Disney. And Toroko had not been lying about his success in sports, either: there was Hikaru in a helmet and boots next to a chestnut horse, smiling and displaying the ribbon that lay a few inches away from the photograph. In another one, he looked entirely too much the newsie as he held a golf club and posed with a trophy. But both awards - along with what Kaoru realized were karate belts, ending in blue - had simply been tossed into the cabinet, and had grown dusty. And then there were the typical pictures that everyone had: school entrance ceremonies, graduations, birthdays, and group shots with friends, where everyone flashed the peace sign and seemed happy - even if it was the same sort of conveyor-belt happiness she had seen in Hikaru's Facebook (™) photo.

It was odd to say the least, at first, to be looking at "herself" in all those contexts. But in truth, it could have been anyone in those pictures, so far removed they seemed from any kind of reality. The travel pictures especially looked like Hikaru might have been posing against a photo studio backdrop, so similar was pasted-on smile from one to the next. A part of her marveled how he had managed to get that much done - and that same part of her wanted to resent him for hardly appreciating the opportunities he had been given. In the picture in front of the Nortre Dame, for instance, he looked like he did not even want to be there. And she wanted to resent him, too, for doing things other sacrificed everything for in a perfunctory manner, or because it was the flavor of the month. For not even caring if he was any good at them, and for not even caring to put them properly away when his "phase" with them ended.

But then again, something did not add up here, either. She simply refused to believe that the Hikaru of the night before was the same one who smiled dutifully in those pictures. The Hikaru she had met had looked so young, and so unadulteratedly blissful, like a child who had seen a fairy long after he gave up believing in them. She did not think it was possible that he would grow cold, or forget - especially since she wasn't a board game or a horse but a person. And who knew, maybe happiness was not about what opportunities you had or didn't. If something was off, something was off. After all, she too had had a reasonably good life, and yet there were still many days when she felt nearly as bad as that morning, and wanted nothing more than to roll around on the floor crying and listening to sad music.

She squeezed the hand Hikaru had held, and suddenly felt even more wrong standing there. Why did she need to try and twist a confession out of a series of pictures under glass when she would see him in person so soon? They still plenty of time, assuming… But then again, two days ago she had thought the same about her parents.

Kaoru quickly reigned in her thoughts, turned around briskly and had started to walk away when she ran smack into Yuzuha on the doorstep.

"I'm… sorry," she whispered, gasping and backing away a few paces, her foot getting tangled in a wizard's cloak. "I… shouldn't be here. I'm really sorry, I just -"

There she was, feeling like she was rifling through someone's underwear drawer when that someone's mother had to go and catch her in the act. Kaoru ardently wished she could become very, very small at will - or disappear altogether.

Yuzuha cast an up and down look at the girl, from the disheveled crown of her hair to her feet in borrowed slippers.

"Honey, we need to get you something else to wear," she said. "Your clothes look a little… lived in."

...

Two hours later, Kaoru was wearing a light, dusty-purple pleated skirt, a green cardigan, and leather boat shoes as she trotted behind Yuzuha down the halls of the hospital. One perk of staying with a fashion designer was that she had a mini studio in her home, and all manner of zero-sized clothing samples, most of which probably cost half of Kaoru's father weekly salary when he was living. Her hair had been brushed into a side-ponytail that she had draped over her chest, and she toyed with it the ends to stave off the jitters. Yuzuha looked very satisfied with herself as she bore a tasteful bouquet of Azaleas - symbolizing family devotion - like an award she had won for mother of the year. She had also placed a decorative lacquer box in Kaoru's hands, filled with get well cards that had already accumulated at the Hitachiin house.

Hikaru was sitting up playing a game on a handheld console, and looked up as they entered the room, the Christmas morning smile spreading over his lips again.

"How are you, love?" said Yuzuha, leaning over to kiss both of his cheeks, the bouquet still in her hands.

"Better. Still a little dizzy when I try to go anywhere. So they told me - if you get up and get dizzy, sit back down. And I was like, no, DUH." He chuckled as she drew away to put the flowers in water. "Kaoru!" he exclaimed, stretching his hands out in his sister's direction.

The girl had been hanging back, clutching the lacquered box in both hands and nearly as shy as the previous day. She had not been able to bring herself to look him in the eye when she had been snooping in his room only a few hours ago, safe though that secret might have been with Yuzuha.

"Kaoru, you look positively lovely, but you've been gone for sixteen hours! That's inexcusable!" he proclaimed with a comically put-upon expression that she was almost sure masked genuine emotion. "First it takes me fifteen years to find you, then we talk for five minutes, and then you disappear again! I was so worried. Did you get a good night's sleep, at least? Was the staff nice to you?"

The girl approached slowly and placed the box on Hikaru's bedside table.

"These are… for you. Letters and stuff."

"I'll read them later, thank you." He pawed for her hand and took it in his before she knew what was happening. "I want to hear about YOU right now." He glanced at his mother, as if asking her permission to eschew talking to her in favor of his sister. Yuzuha smiled a delicate Noh-mask smile that seemed to slip into her eyes, nodded, and settled across the room, plunging into her Ipad.

"Me?" A slight blush cast a glow over Kaoru's cheeks as she observed the pantomime between mother and son. "There's not much to say about me."

"No way. I'm sure there's plenty. Tell me about -"

He paused. What DID he want to know about her? All night, the image of her had not left his head. He had never met anyone whose parents had died, and he had never interacted with a commoner to any significant degree. And there she was, a two-for-one. He had a million questions, but in the end they all boiled down to the same thing: "What is it like to… BE you? Can I shadow you for a day? Can I live under your skin?" But you couldn't just ask someone something like that.

A very obvious first thing to ask someone was about their family and where they came from. But with Kaoru, he assumed, those were potentially triggering topics. And besides, Yuzuha had already given him all the facts. She had found out everything: where Kaoru had lived, and where she had gone to school (startlingly, her school was called Ouran Public). Yuzuha also knew what Kaoru's parents did for a living: her father was a mid-level executive at a real estate firm and her mother had gone back to work part-time as a kindergarten teacher when Kaoru started middle school. She had even gone so far as to rustle up Kaoru's disciplinary record, and as a result Hikaru knew that his sister was a bit of a tearaway. Which didn't make sense - not when Yuzuha had told him that Kaoru had been nothing but polite, and not when she looked the way she did. Her face had none of the me-against-the-world sullenness of the typical juvenile delinquent, and dressed so primly and properly, her back elegant and straight and her hands folded in her lap, she looked far more the princess than any girl at Ouran. In fact, he had almost had to bite his tongue to keep himself from calling her just that when she had come in.

"Tell me about what you like to do," he said finally. "I mean, when school is done and such."

"Oh. Well… It depends on the day." Kaoru smiled a bit and raised her eyes, and Hikaru's heart fluttered triumphantly.

"Okay, so what did you do last Tuesday, for instance?"

Kaoru looked up at the ceiling and thought back. Last week - or anything beyond yesterday - felt like it had happened to someone else.

"I had pre-season basketball training," she said, remembering that last Tuesday had been one of Those Days - a day she felt sad for no reason. "After that, I didn't have anywhere to be, and I was bored, so I took the train and listened to a Lilly Allen CD on repeat. I went all the way to Shin-Takashimadaira. It took two and a half hours, but that was because I rode around the circle line twice first, trying to make up my mind."

"Shin-Takashimadaira? Why?"

Hikaru smiled with half his mouth in a poor attempt to disguise his bemusement. Either Kaoru was very strange, or he knew less about the habits of commoners than he had thought.

"I don't know. I just pointed at random on a subway map and decided that it would be a good day to go there. I've been doing that for fun ever since I was little. It's a nice way to be alone and clear your head, but you never know who and what you might run into."

"Your parents… LET you go places unaccompanied?" Hikaru could not help but shoot a horrified look at Yuzuha, but she was far too absorbed in her work to notice.

"Oh, sure," replied Kaoru - miraculously failing to wince at the mention of her parents, and Hikaru released the breath he'd been holding ever since he'd blurted out the ill-advised words. "It's not like there's a lot of crime in the city."

O…kay. That was certainly not what had been pounded into Hikaru's head from day one.

"I… See," he said slowly. "So what's in Shin-Takashimadaira?"

"Not a whole lot. A weird-looking fountain that you see when you come right out of the station: it looks like rainclouds on stakes. Shops, too, and some new apartment buildings. There was one thing that sort of cheered me up, though. There's a nail polish store that seems to sell every nail polish ever made. It has music blasting like it's a disco or an arcade or something - even in the middle of the day. And it's run by a funny little old man who probably shops for clothes in the children's department. All he does is walk around and say 'Konichiwaaaaaa*.' Not even 'Irashaimasse*.' Konichiwa. And not even to customers - just randomly. Like, he said it to the wall a couple times. And it seems like his goal was to drag out each 'a' for at least a minute."

(Konichiwa is "hello" and is on the informal side; Irashaimasse is the standard expression among business-owners that means "welcome to our shop.")

Kaoru had started to come alive as she conjured up images of the nail polish store with a faraway look in her eyes, and Hikaru marveled at how little it took to make one emotion rush to replace the next on her face. A nail polish shop with a funny proprietor in a no-name, far-flung ward of Tokyo? She was a fascinating creature and no mistake. He wondered how much more colorful the same life might have been if he spent fifteen years looking at it through her eyes.

"I don't really wear nail polish, myself," Kaoru added, looking critically at her hand, which was still in Hikaru's, and splaying her fingers. "But it was almost enough to make me think about trying. There were so many colors, I could have worn a different one every day for the rest of my life."

She didn't wear nail polish? Hikaru cast a furtive look down, and, sure enough, even their hands were nearly indistinguishable - it didn't seem like Kaoru's had seen much more than a nail clipper in recent memory. And she was an athlete - which might have explained her less-than-dainty, almost tomboyish stance and manner of walking. But her hair was among the longest and shiniest he had ever seen, even among the high-maintenance heiresses of Ouran - a pain to pin out of the way every time she played, probably, so she really ought to have cared about it to go through all the trouble. What sort of juvenile delinquent-slash-tomboy was she, anyway? Unless she was in a Yankee motorcycle gang - those girls had long hair, and were fierce in a less-than-feminine way. But then again, he had never seen a Yankee except in movies, and he could not imagine Kaoru would be one: she seemed like a creature of contradictions, but not an extremist.

"So you don't like to stick to just one image," he ventured.

"How did you guess?" She chuckled softly, cocking her head.

"Well, you like to pick something at random and go with it. But you also seem to like to have options."

"You're right."

"What do you like about it?"

Hikaru caught himself thinking that Kaoru would like Tamaki if she ever met him. Half of Tamaki's madcap schemes were so random, you wondered whether his mind was a room-full of monkeys with dart boards, and all he did was connect the dots.

"Well," she said, her eyes still fixed on her splayed-out fingers. "I guess I've always liked to inject bits of chaos into my life because I've always been waiting for something to happen that would change everything. And when I got bored of waiting, I'd try to make it happen on my own."

Hikaru felt his heart skip a beat. So there was method to her madness after all and she, too, had been searching for something that had no name. Suddenly, holding hands did not feel like nearly enough.

Kaoru looked up from examining her hand and their eyes met.

"Kaoru, you've got beautiful hair," Hikaru suddenly found himself saying. "How long did it take to grow out?"

"All my life, pretty much." If she was made uncomfortable by the attention suddenly paid to her appearance, she did not show it; she was still wearing the same faraway, doe-eyed expression.

"Doesn't it get in the way when you play sports?"

"No. I do crown braids around my head. I figure - the shorter your hair, the fewer options you've got in the long-term."

"Can I - touch it?"

What was he SAYING? Hikaru nearly chocked on the words as they formed in his throat. Girls did not like their hair touched, and now his sister was probably going to think he was some sort of pervert…

But no… Kaoru looked confused by the request, but only for a moment. She nodded, and he reached out breathlessly for the base of the long ponytail that hung over her chest. As she turned to give him easier access, the sunlight slanting through the window skidded across the crown of her head, painting it a reddish-gold. He ran his fingers through the strands, thick and strong yet soft as silk, and suddenly had the image of holding Kaoru in his arms, alone at home, listening to the summer rain pound against the roof.

"Hikaru!" - his mother's voice cut its way into his consciousness, tinged with a note of what - with Yuzuha - passed for severe. "I don't like you touching Kaoru's hair that way."

Hikaru looked up to find his mother had gotten up from her seat, the work on her tablet quite abandoned. He let his hands fall to his lap, and felt a nearly physical twinge of pain. Kaoru pulled back and looked up at the women.

"It's okay, Mrs. Hitachiin," she said quietly. "Really. It's just hair."


	5. The Basketball Court

Over the course of the next few days, Kaoru fell into something of a routine. In the mornings, she would pull herself out of bed and drag herself cheerlessly to the bathroom. Next, she would consume a plate of toasted shotupan prepared by Toroko. And then, invariably, she would dress in one of the outfits picked out by Yuzuha - usually a sweater and a skirt - and set off on foot to Shirokanedai station, where she would catch the subway to the hospital in time for visiting hours. It was still hard to fall asleep at night because of the silence, and it was still hard to wake in the morning on account of the bed being too far away from the window, but if not for the daily trip she might have given up altogether, and stayed up all night shooting hoops only to sleep through the day - all the to better to ignore condolence calls from relatives and friends she did not want to talk to. Visiting hours, at least, gave her some sort of a structure. And while Yuzuha had been skeptical about letting her go alone on the subway, Kaoru pleaded a fear of cars and not wanting to be a bother to anybody, and in the end had gotten her way, in all probability because Yuzuha had decided that arguing with the bereaved would not win her many points in the afterlife.

Kaoru had in fact developed a slight fear of cars after her first ride with Yuzuha in a dark company Volvo, which she guessed was not unlike the one Hikaru had been in when he'd suffered the crash. Nor did it help when she learned that the chauffeur was replacing a colleague who had narrowly escaped the accident with two broken arms and was home recovering. But more than that, the daily ride on the subway became a lifeline in and of itself. The older Hitachiins were always gone for the better part of the day - which was to be expected: both seemed to be important, in-demand people. But Kaoru still felt forgotten and lost, and to escape, she took the train. In her old life, the subway had always drawn her in when she was sad - a hub of randomness, abuzz with potential. To a degree, it felt that way still, but it was also one of the few things that had remained a constant between her old life and her new one.

The other silver lining to her days, of course, was that Hikaru was remarkably easy to be with. He always greeted her with a smile, and it took him no time at all to start acting as if they had known each other forever. With him, there were no elephants in the room, no tiptoeing around things, and no feeling like she was made of glass, about to break at any moment. Only you, me, and us - and no moment but the present. It did not even matter that Kaoru still felt half-alive. Though still a trifle bed-bound, Hikaru was more than alive enough for both of them.

When Kaoru came in for the first time by herself, Hikaru had been immersed in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, which was required vacation reading for incoming freshmen at Ouran Academy. Hikaru seemed excited for high school, having changed his Facebook (™) affiliation ahead of time, and put up a profile picture showing off his new uniform. But Kaoru was quick to learn that some parts of school enthused him more than others.

"You know," Hikaru declared, as if his sister had gone out for a coffee and was gone no more than five minutes. "I liked A Movable Feast, but this is ridiculous. Even Hemingway seems to have had a few misfires."

"Oh?" Kaoru sat down on the chair by the head of the bed, trying to infuse her voice with the energy she wanted to feel.

"I swear, it's a book about nothing. They wake up and decide, let's go to this place. And then they go there, and they drink. And then they do it again, and there's this one guy who keeps getting made fun of for being Jewish. And that's seriously all the book is."

"Really? I've never read it."

"Well, here, let me read it to you…"

And before long, they were both nose-deep into the novel as they took turns reading - complete with voices for each of the characters and smart-aleck remarks aimed below the narrator's belt. Hikaru seemed to really enjoy making ferocious fun of the book's laconic style - which in his mind resembled chopping wood and driving metal stakes into the ground.

"You know, Kaoru, this is fun," Hikaru had finally said, after recovering from his fifteenth paroxysm of laughter that hour. "You ought to come live with us, and go to Ouran with me. We can do homework together, and it'll be so much easier that way. We can also sit together in class to make the day go faster. I think the secret to getting through a boring school day is having someone to pass notes with. Last year I was stuck sitting next to the student council representative. You can imagine how THAT went."

But Kaoru had lowered her eyes - and that was all it took for Hikaru to sense she was not ready to go there. He changed the subject so quickly and so deftly, she was surprised just how naturally she ended up going with the flow.

On another occasion, Hikaru was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a box of assorted sweets in front of him, and had declaimed to the tune of Forrest Gump as he took a large bite out of a chocolate turtle: "Life is like-a box-a chocolates, Kow-roo - you never know whacha gonna get!"

"What are you talking about, Hikaru?" Kaoru had chuckled despite having had a particularly bad time of scraping herself out of bed that morning. "I mean, you MAY be right, but it's certainly not THIS box of chocolates. It says what the flavors are - right on the box. It even says WHERE they are." She pointed to the scheme of the lid that indicated the arrangement of the "mystery" flavors.

"Right, but what if you can't read? Then you're screwed!" He took a delicate nibble of a sweet - this one apparently filled with strawberry nougat.

"Then… I don't know," replied Kaoru. "You might have to rely on pattern recognition. In time you'd realize there's only a finite number of flavors, and that they keep arranging them in the same way. I mean, they have to: it would cost too much to print different layout schemes every time." She could not help but keep smiling, debating whether she ought to tell him that she had given the question a great deal of thought when she was a little tyke of ten, and had reached the disappointing conclusions she had just outlined.

"Tisk-tisk-tisk," Hikaru shook his head. "This coming from the girl who seems to love randomness so much she rides the subway waiting for a woman with a cat on her head to come into the car and change the course of the universe?" He motioned for her to open her mouth and made a show of pretending that the truffle he was holding was an airplane coming in for a landing. "I mean, what if there's an accident at the factory? You gotta live a little and at least admit the possibility."

And then there was the time he greeted her with a conspiratorial look and told her that a friend had gone to the south of France and sent him a bottle of lavender-flavored syrup which you were supposed to mix with sparkling water, and which he had been saving just for her. The lavender syrup ended up tasting like soap suds, and they had a good laugh about it, agreeing that certain fragrances were better left in the bathtub. But it was a long time before Kaoru could banish from her head the sight of the delicate, practiced turn of Hikaru's wrist as he poured the water. And it did not help matters when her insisted she walk arm in arm with him down the hall during his physical therapy session. In fact, Hikaru seemed to have a penchant to physically invading other people's space to various ends, and had gotten it into his head that his daily turn around the trauma wing was the perfect chance to show Kaoru off to everyone he met.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Kuriyama," Hikaru had said, casting an exaggerated bow to an old lady they bumped into - so exaggerated, in fact, that both Kaoru and the physical therapist had to catch his arms to keep him from toppling over in his less-than-coordinated state. "How are you this fine day?"

"Good, Hikaru, very good - thank you for asking. With any luck I'll be out of here by summer." The old lady had smiled with all the solemn dignity of her eighty-plus years.

"Allow me to introduce my baby sister," Hikaru gestured at Kaoru. "So she's only three days old. She must have gotten lost in the mail - because three days ago is when mom finally delivered her! Isn't she cute?!" He pinched Kaoru's cheeks and puckered his lips at her, making Kaoru blush fifty shades of crimson.

"Hikaru… Please," she whispered. "You're embarrassing me… In front of everyone..."

"Yo, Hitachiin, are you sure that's a sister?" called a teenage boy, who was apparently Hikaru's next-door neighbor, and had been making his way back from the lounge laden with snacks. "Looks more like a brother dressed in bad drag."

Hikaru pulled Kaoru closer and glared at the boy. "I have it on good authority that my sister," he proclaimed, "Is not only a sister but a lady of very superior charm and beauty. And if you say anything else about her, I'll send you back to the ICU, you got me?"

Kaoru was about to whisper another strangled protestation - but Hikaru flashed her a smile so brilliantly mischievous, she found herself regrouping faster than she'd thought possible as the blood rushed from her face to her head. She cast a conciliatory yet significant look at those present.

"Don't mind my brother." She lowered her voice with a smile. "He's had a little too much… morphine. Come on, Hikaru" - she pulled his arm - "I think it's time for your - uh - water closet."

But it never lasted. A nurse would always poke her head in and inform Hikaru that he had another visitor. Sometimes, it would be Yuzuha or Yuzuke, who were still very kind, and always had a present for one both of them - or some uplifting news. But the fun would still be over, as the twins were more on their guard when the parents were around ever since Hikaru got in trouble for touching Kaoru's hair. At other times, Hikaru would be told that his friends had come to visit, at which point Kaoru would conveniently remember she had something to do and hasten out. When it came down to it, she simply did not feel ready to make a more official entrance into his world. And Hikaru seemed to understand that, and never pressured her to stay.

As Kaoru hurried away from the hospital, she always caught herself wondering if it was right to let her days revolve around one person. That was the stuff of bad relationships, she would say to herself, and codependency, and all sorts of objectionable things. Sure, the feeling she had when she first saw Hikaru was no illusion; with him things always felt so… RIGHT, and there was no need to pretend, or posture, or think too much. She had even begun to smile more. But was that… enough? And how much of it was simply the natural tendency to grab onto the first plank that floated your way amid a shipwreck?

To avoid pondering the question too much, when Kaoru returned to at the Hitachiin house she would spend much of her time on the mini basketball court, doing solo drills. Something about being all body was soothing, and invariably knocked the neurosis out of her head for a while. When she got tired, she would sit down, pull the knees up to her chin, and stare at the skyline. The sun would sink behind the jagged row of skyscrapers, and then everything would turn blue as a Picasso painting, and the stars would come out. The Hitachiins lived in the city, but the same preponderance of green, open space that made Shirokanedai so quiet also managed to diffuse the light pollution a bit, and the stars were far brighter than any she had seen before.

In fact, one time Kaoru realized that if she looked straight up, it was almost too easy to fool herself into believing she was somewhere very far away, like the desert or the savannah. She imagined billowing waves of grass all around her, and something about the image - its undefined vastness - made her feel better.

Are you there, mom and dad? - she asked the sky.

When she was young, she liked the idea in The Lion King that the stars were the eyes of the dead, looking down on the world. And the image of Mufasa's ghost walking out of the clouds to tragic yet uplifting music had always stuck with her, and made shivers run down her spine and tears rise in her throat.

If life were simple - Kaoru thought, as she lay back against the concrete, balancing the ball on her stomach - then that's what would happen right now. Eiji and Sayoko Suzumiya would come out of the clouds that had obscured the moon, and would look just as tragic and majestic as Mufasa -

But what would they tell her? What did she want to HEAR?

Unlike Simba, she had not forgotten who she was - at least she didn't think she had. And she would not forget them, either, for the example they had set in working hard, living a life of virtue, and being grateful for every day was something she could only hope she would one day emulate. No, perhaps she was the one who would do the talking, and who would run after them - even if she knew it was futile - and tell them that she was so, so sorry that it had turned out that way.

She closed her eyes to the sky - from which she knew no miracle would be forthcoming - and turned to her side, still hugging the ball against her stomach.

...

"Kaoru?… Kaoru?!… Kaoru!"

She tried to ignore her name being called the first time around, having decided she felt bad enough to try and fall asleep right then and there, but the second time was more insistent and the third time was downright frazzled, just over her ear. She opened her eyes, and found her brother learning over her. Morose though she felt, she could not help but start.

"Hikaru… You're back?" She pulled herself up into a seating position. "I didn't know you were getting out today. How are you feeling?"

"Alright. Still not supposed to run or do anything too strenuous, but I thought I'd surprise you." Hikaru sat back on his haunches, evidently relieved that she was neither dead nor seriously injured. "What are you doing on the ground?"

"Oh, just… resting."

"Resting? Out here?" Hikaru cocked his head with a chuckle, ever the curious Golden Retriever pup. "Doesn't seem too comfortable."

"That's okay," Kaoru said, mirroring his posture as she sat on her calves, the basketball in her lap. "My dad always said a soft bed makes for a soft body."

Hikaru narrowed his eyes a bit to observe Kaoru. Until now, his sister had pointedly avoided talking about her parents, and the fact that she had volunteered something about her father out of the blue was a surprise indeed. And yet, while she seemed to have been trying her best to make her voice sound jauntily nonchalant, she had also quickly turned away and was looking at the horizon of glowing buildings.

"Seems… like your dad was a very special man," Hikaru said.

Hikaru moved closer toward her, shifting so that he was facing in the same direction. Yes, it was strange perhaps that she had mentioned her father all on her own, but then again, the Kaoru he had seen in the hospital was far different from the Kaoru he found on the basketball court. Even on the first night, Kaoru had looked strong - or like she was very much trying to be. And every day after that, she would come in dressed so smartly, her back ramrod-straight, and would smile so bravely through his lame attempts to entertain her. He had tried, time and again, to think what it would feel like if he lost HIS parents. Kaoru or no Kaoru, he concluded, he certainly could not imagine himself getting up to make the same trip across town every day, alone - and awe could not begin to describe what he had felt toward her.

But the Kaoru who sat beside him now was far smaller and sadder, and there was something so pained in the way she hunched her shoulders and hugged the ball against her chest that it made him want to put his arm around her - or at least offer his jacket if he were wearing one.

"Kaoru, are you cold?" he asked. "Do you want to go inside?"

She shook her head as if to indicate - no, she wanted to watch the city skyline as if it were some odd, celestial screensaver.

"Can you tell me more about your dad?"

Kaoru looked down at her hands, poised over the taut leather of the ball, as if trying very hard to remember. Hikaru waited, with baited breath, as her stomach rose and fell in time with her breathing.

"He was a really good person," she said at last, as if speaking to no one in particular. "He was all about me not being lazy. About not taking a single day for granted. Or taking anything for granted at all, really."

Hikaru could not help but chuckle under his breath. Mr. Suzumiya probably would not have liked HIM, then. He was as lazy a bum as they came - and he didn't even need his own father to tell him that on the daily. As for taking things for granted - he was not naive. He knew that pretty much everyone at Ouran took just about everything for granted, and he did too, and that was simply the state of things.

"It's funny," Kaoru continued. "He never got mad at me for any of the stupid stuff I did that almost got me kicked out of school. He probably knew I didn't mean any harm - I just had too much energy and didn't know what to do with myself. But if he caught me being lazy - that was another story."

"Really? What did he do?" Hikaru caught himself thinking that, whatever Kaoru's father might have thought of HIM, he certainly would not have minded meeting him - and perhaps having a beer with him if he were older.

"Well, there was this one time last year when we went to Kyoto."

Kaoru's voice had grown a touch livelier - but only a touch - and she fixed her eyes on the horizon and fell into the same measured, storytelling tone that Hikaru first observed when she recounted the discovery of the nail polish shop in Shin-Takashimadaira.

"We'd had the trip planned for a while," she said, "But mom ended up having to go in for a minor surgery and was recovering, so it was just the two of us. And I was having a really sad phase for no reason, and never wanted to get out of bed in the morning. So the way he dealt with it was - he would throw open the windows, and start blasting some Broadway musical on the stereo. First it was Jesus Christ Superstar, then The Phantom of the Opera - you know that sudden, explosive part in the beginning with the organ? It's rousing, but terribly scary if you're trying to sleep. And I'd yell and throw pillows at him, but he wouldn't give up." She paused, and Hikaru realized it was to keep her voice from breaking. "He'd keep blasting whatever it was until I got out of bed, and then he'd run me all over Kyoto as if we were on some timed scavenger hunt. And when it was over" - she swallowed - "I realized it was the best vacation I had in my life."

She covered her eyes with her hand.

Hikaru realized he did not want to think anymore. He shifted toward Kaoru and put his arm around her shoulders. For a second, he half-expected her to start, or at least to look up, but she did not. Instead, a small shiver stole across her shoulder, and she let herself lean into the hug just the tiniest bit. He found himself overcome by the reality of her - for Kaoru had muscle, and bone, and blood, and a heart that beat, and wasn't just going to disappear under his fingers. A few moments passed before he could speak again.

"I'm… happy you shared that with me, Kaoru," he said, wondering immediately if the words were even necessary. "Your dad was a wonderful man. It would have an honor to know him."

And I wish to God your father wasn't just a memory anymore - he wanted to add. Because you don't deserve to be so sad. You're so strong, and so lovely. You look like a queen, so poised and so dignified, but you feel like a chrysalis. And when you tell stories, it's like you have the power to teleport everyone around you to the places you've been. And anyone who makes you smile has it made - whether it's by blasting "The Phantom of the Opera" to get you out of bed, or by doing about anything else.

Kaoru was still looking down, and Hikaru had let the silence sit. In truth, she could not remember the last time she had been touched that way, and it was certainly the first time on THIS side of reality. It felt… unfathomable, a complete reframing of things, and yet like the most natural thing that could be, as if a glass wall between her and the world had been shattered.

They sat in silence for a few moments, the city blazing in the distance, and then she heard the guitar riff from the song "Shissou."

She reached into her pocket, but was surprised to find it wasn't vibrating.

"Hello?"

Hikaru slid open his phone and held it to his ear.

Kaoru's breath lodged in her throat before she could gasp. "Shissou" was not exactly the most common choice in ring tones - nor did it come standard.

"Okay, be right there." Hikaru snapped his phone shut and smiled apologetically. "You know your house is too big when your parents call your cell to tell you it's dinner time," he chuckled, got up, and stretched out a hand. "Come on. I'm hungry. Let's have dinner."

Kaoru looked at the hand, a bit dazed, and felt at once cold - Hikaru gone from her side - and like she was percolating. She stared at the hand for a long moment, and Hikaru waited, his eyelids slightly lowered and a smile playing on his lips in a mien reminiscent of Yuzuha's old-world breeding and grace. Suddenly, Kaoru had visions of being dressed in furs and getting out of a stagecoach with Hikaru offering his hand in just that way, in an era when a brush of fingers meant a great deal more.

She took a breath, nodded, and pushed herself off the ground with both hands, letting go of the basketball.

…

Even on weeknights, the Hitachiins dined with white tablecloths, and Kaoru had concluded that looking somewhat presentable for the evening meal was only proper. To that end, she had stopped by her room before dinner to change out of sweats and fix her hair. As she studied her expression in the mirror, she remembered Hikaru, and how stoically disappointed he looked when she pooh-pooh'ed the hand he offered to help her. She had immediately regretted that decision - it had been silly, after all, to read so much into things. He had hugged her because she was sad, and because she had shared something meaningful. That's all it was - the long and the short of it.

And yet - she thought as she ran her hairbrush through her hair - there was still that one, other time. Even though Hikaru had been berated for touching her hair, and had kept mum about it afterwards, the one day she had shown up to the hospital with her hair loose he had said that he liked it that way. When she asked him why, he said it was because he'd always wanted to do something. And then he had reached out and tucked a stray lock behind her ear, and blushed, and taken a very deliberate gulp of lavender-flavored mineral water.

Kaoru quickly pulled the tie out of her hair, brushed the frizz from it, and gave it a quick once-over with hairspray. If nothing else, she thought, it might cheer Hikaru up and make him feel less slighted.

Downstairs, Yuzuha and Yuzuke kept eyeing each other with surreptitious smiles, and the mood was cheery. None of the staff had known that Hikaru would be returning that day either, and they all seemed to tarry just a bit as they walked through the dining room to ask him numerous questions, all of which he answered very eagerly. Moreover, he made sure that the wait staff thoroughly educated Kaoru on the etymology of each dish, and peppered their explanations with culinary anecdotes that he and Yuzuke, both gourmands, had amassed over the course of their travels. As a result, the dozen candles that served as the centerpiece had burned halfway down their lengths when Yuzuha dropped the bomb, having patiently waited for the end of a story about halibut eaten in Prague that tasted like river-water, but in a "good way."

"Kaoru," she said, "I've been meaning to talk to you about something - though I wanted to wait until Hikaru was home."

Kaoru put down her fork - truthfully, she still had trouble remembering where it went in the long line of utensils - and swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.

"Have you talked to your extended family at all? The ones in Kyushu?

"Yes, a little."

Kaoru was anticipating this conversation - or something like it. But this was not what she expected Yuzuha to lead with.

"The wake is the day after tomorrow, by the way," Kaoru added quickly, wondering if she had misjudged what the conversation was really about.

"Good." Yuzuha smiled her placid Mona Lisa smile. "Would you like us to be there?"

"No, that won't be necessary…" Kaoru paused, wondering if blurting out a negative answer so quickly and so decisively was rude, given everything the woman had done for her. "What I mean is - you didn't know each other. And I don't want my parents' day to be overshadowed by me revealing that I've got family I didn't know existed."

"I understand." If Yuzuha was offended, she certainly gave no sign. "My other question, though, was if you'd given any thought to where you'd like to live once all is said and done."

Yuzuha took a sip from her tumbler as she waited for Kaoru's answer, leaving a small smear of lipstick on the rim, and the girl could not help but feel just as cornered as she had on the first day, when Yuzuha found her in Hikaru's room. In fact, Mrs. Hitachiin's question was the very one she had actively avoiding. Kaoru cast a desperate glance at Hikaru, who sat across from her, but the latter looked far too much like a prisoner awaiting his sentence to be of much help.

"I'm not sure," Kaoru replied.

"Well, we were thinking that unless you want to go to Kyushu," said Yuzuha, "It only makes sense that you stay with us. You and Hikaru seem to be getting along well, and as his sister your welfare is very important to us. In fact, we can go ahead and move to officially adopt you into our family, if that's something you're interested in. It would be an adult adoption at this point, of course - same as for the purposes of continuing a family lineage. I believe at 15 you're old enough."

Yuzuha's smile spread a touch wider than Mona Lisa's and Kaoru could swear she saw her hand inch closer to her husband's. Hikaru did not look like he was breathing.

Of course. That's where things were headed all along, wasn't it? It took an idiot not to realize it. And Yuzuha was right - it only made sense, given the alternatives. Kaoru would want for nothing that way, and going to Kyushu and putting 600-some miles between her and Hikaru was not something she wanted to think about. And yet, to hear it put so plainly had framed things in an entirely different light. Just like the day she had seen her parents lying on two cold slabs, it infused things with a terrible, irreversible finality.

"You've been very kind, Mr. and Mrs. Hitachiin," Kaoru said, making a desperate play for time as she stretched the honorifics as long as she could manage. "But you are too kind. It's such a generous offer, I don't know what to say." She bowed her head and cast a quick look at Hikaru with just her eyes, and bit her lip.

It seemed like Yuzuha's aura of quiet imperiousness was the only thing that kept her brother from sprawling on the floor, clutching her knees, burying his face in her skirt, and weeping like a baby.

"Nonsense, Kaoru," said Yuzuke, "We feel terrible that you and Hikaru had been separated for so long. And anyone can see you have a very special bond. We feel it is only right."

And yet - Kaoru could not help but think, even as she stared into her plate - an adult adoption. It would mean that she would have to go to city hall herself and take her name - quite physically - from her parents' registry book and transfer it to the Hitachiins'. The thought of her parents' registry, empty of heirs as if none had ever existed, was enough to make her feel like the halibut she consumed had come alive and was swimming in her stomach.

Kaoru swallowed, straightened her shoulders, and looked at the Hitachiins.

"I want to accept. I really do," she said. "I know there's no other place I would rather be living," she added with a glance in the direction of a fast-wilting Hikaru. "But I don't think an official adoption is something I'm ready for. It's… nothing against you, it's just that I'm literally the only person with my last name in my generation. My father's cousin in Kyushu - the only other Suzumiya man - has no children either, and a business. I feel like there are certain things I have to… And my parents - I don't want to…" She trailed off and looked back at the mosaic rim of her plate, hoping the Hitachiins would understand without her going into more detail.

"Well, that's alright," Kaoru heard Yuzuha's voice, mellifluous as ever, and raised her head - still shaking a bit. "It's up to you - and it's not a decision you have to make right away. Although if you're going to be living here, you're going to have to tell your relatives what's going on at some point so they don't get worried."

"But the good news is, you're staying!" Hikaru exclaimed. "My little sister's STAYING!… Mother, may I…?"

Yuzuha nodded indulgently as Hikaru made a move to get up - the Hitachiins were quite strict about getting up from the table during dinner.

"Kaoru, you're STAYING!"

The boy trotted around the long table, all but sprinting the last third of the way, and Kaoru grabbed hold of the cushion of her chair just in case - though it was still not enough to keep her from pitching violently to the left when he tackled her.

… Which may have been just as well, had Kaoru's hair had not pitched in the same direction she had, whiplashing past the low-burning candles.

Before half a second was up a good twenty inches were in flames, propelled by high-performance hairspray - and her scalp might have met the same fate if Hikaru had not seized a pitcher of water and dumped it on her head, and Yuzuke had not thrown his blazer over her to put out the remnants.

Kaoru began to scream.

She screamed hysterically for a good minute, even as her brother batted her feverishly over the blazer to smother the fire. By the end, half the household staff came running, bearing - by that point - a rather useless fire extinguisher.

When the dust settled, the blazer was pulled off to reveal a frightened, hyperventilating Kaoru, her hair singed to just below her ears. With no vertical tresses to frame her face she looked even more the clone of Hikaru, and a few of the staff could not help gasping.

"Oh, no, Kaoru…" Hikaru's legs bucked, and he fell to his knees. "I'm so, so, so, so, so sorry" - he sounded nearly as hysterical as Kaoru looked. If before he looked like a prisoner awaiting his sentence, by now he was a dead man walking. "I'm an idiot… A stupid, stupid idiot…" he repeated, burying his face in his hands.

Yuzuha got up from her chair. Somehow, she had managed to remain perfectly unruffled, and had not moved except to press a few buttons on her handheld device to summon the staff and - in all probability - the fire department.

"Alright, thank you very much, everybody, for your very prompt response," she said, as if what transpired had been nothing more than a test of the emergency alert system. "We'll take it from here. Toroko, Katsumi, stay behind."

Yuzuha made her way around the table and put her hand on Kaoru's shoulder. The girl was still shaking, and there was a harsh smell of burnt keratin in the air, mixed in with the sickly-sweet of hairspray.

"How are you feeling, darling?"

Kaoru took a ragged breath and nodded.

"I'm alright, Mrs. Hitachiin… It's just ha-"

Kaoru paused. She still felt raw, but the adrenaline in her veins was starting to dissipate, and suddenly - paradoxically - every muscle in her body felt the same bliss it did after a grueling run, when you wanted nothing but to come home, collapse in bed, and sleep happily ever after. She looked down at Hikaru, who was still kneeling with his face in his hands, evidently trying to disappear. Her head felt too light for comfort, even considering the loss of her hair, and she lifted a hand to touch the back of her neck - so bare it felt like someone else's.

She began to laugh, and laughed - spasmodically - for far longer than she ought to have done.

"Get up, Hikaru," she said at last, recovering her breath. She stretched out her hand as his brother raised his eyes at her, incredulous. "You're not an idiot. All things considered, it could be much worse. They could be rushing me to the ER, and I REALLY don't want to go back to the hospital right now."


	6. Last Rites

"Kaoru, are you SURE you don't want me to come with you?"

The twins were sitting in the back seat of the car on the way to the funeral. Kaoru was looking out the window, and her black silk kimono, embroidered with a floral design in matte thread, made her skin paler and her hair redder. Hikaru wore a plainer men's kimono to match, just in case Kaoru changed her mind. Sayoko Suzumiya had been a practicing Buddhist, and the funeral was going to be a traditional one.

"I'll be alright."

"Okay, whatever you're most comfortable with."

Hikaru decided not to press the conversation further, and studied his sister out of the corner of his eye. He still marveled at just how well she managed to keep herself together, even as she dealt with grief he could not begin to imagine. Through it all, aside from the moment they had shared at the basketball court, she had remained stoic and beautiful, carrying her grief with a solemn dignity few people twice her age were capable of. And she didn't seem less herself for it. She was still Kaoru - just… further away, as if she'd gone someplace in her mind - the same way she did when she told stories, but this time she wasn't taking anyone with her.

In fact - Hikaru thought as his eyes fell on the baby hair at the nape of her neck - dealing with things so well it was nearly frightening seemed to be a pattern with Kaoru. When she had lost her hair the day before yesterday, she had screamed for a good minute, and then laughed like a mental patient. But once she'd recovered from the shock, she offered no further comment on the issue. And come next morning, things appeared to go back to normal, if you didn't count the fact that Kaoru's breasts had grown slightly larger - probably by some artificial means - and she had started wearing skirts a little more on the billowy side. Hikaru had at first been perturbed by the circumstances, and had almost started tiptoeing around her in case some terrible crash was still on its way. But two days had passed and she truly seemed to have forgiven him. She'd even let him accompany her to the stylist, and teach her how to arrange her hair in the same artfully windswept way he did his. At last, Hikaru had concluded that in light of the loss of her parents, something as ephemeral and mutable as hair was small potatoes. And if from time to time he didn't notice her raise her hand to her chest, fingering for something - only to pause, hesitate, and put it down again - he might have been able to forgive himself as well.

The car came to a stop - as arranged, a block away from the temple, just in case Kaoru's arrival in what resembled a limo would serve to alienate her from her family. Kaoru took a deep breath. Hikaru reached across the seats and took her hand in his.

"I'll be right here if you need me," he said. "Call or come get me at any time, okay?"

Kaoru nodded and closed her eyes as she fiddled with the drawstring purse that came with the kimono, her fingers ashen against the black cloth. She reached for the door, but her hand paused over the handle. She turned around - and before Hikaru knew what was happening, she had pulled him into a hug so sudden and so tight he hardly knew what to think until it was over and she was gone, with a rustle of silk and a slam of the door.

...

Kaoru's father's cousin had been the closest thing Eiji Suzumiya ever had to a brother. Being his closest male relative, Kenji Suzumiya had also taken it upon himself to arrange the wake and the funeral. Kaoru took her place by his side at the door of the temple as the guests filed inside. Together, it would be their task to greet everyone as they entered, and to oversee the distribution of condolence money envelopes. And that was just as well - it took Kaoru's mind off what was inside the ceremony hall.

When she saw the bodies at the wake one day prior, Kaoru had expected to feel more. But if in the hospital, from afar, her parents had looked like effigies, when the morticians were done this came to be doubly true. The figures in the coffins at the altar seemed like nothing more than wax likenesses - with sleeping faces done up in thick, ghoulish makeup to hide their true color. As Kaoru looked at them, she felt sad, but mostly at how desperate of a charade it all was. The whole thing had the air of an absurdist play, and the curtain had just risen on the second act: the funeral, at the end of which the effigies would go up in flames.

As far as performances went, thus far it had been impeccable. The Kyushu set had come out in their complete assembly, and a number of the Suzumiyas' neighbors, friends, and coworkers were also in attendance. Altogether, it made for a gathering of some significance, and best of all, everyone knew their place, their steps, and their lines. Kaoru knew hers too, of course, and they were easy. Just bow, and nod at the perfunctory offers of help, and give a small smile now and then to deflect the pity. No, remembering names isn't necessary - you're grieving, you can't be expected to. And thankfully, your hair seems to take everyone's mind off the obvious question. Just tell people you've cut it as a sign of respect - it sounds far better that way, anyway. She still felt naked without her hair, and the occasion made her feel doubly naked, so at first it had been difficult. But the set of prayer beads her uncle had given her became something to tug on as she used to do on her hair, and soon she fell into a rhythm. Before she knew it, all the guests had filed in, and it was time for them to take their places in the front row of the mourners' hall, in the section reserved for family.

The service began, and the priest started to chant a sutra, his voice floating to the roof and mixing with curls of smoke from the incense burners. Kaoru did not catch the words of the chant, but as she listened to the swell of the sound she had the distinct image of a river rounding a bend in its course, its waters full, rich, and sonorous. Her parents were gone - definitely gone - having lived their lives as best they could, and as the shoal along the river of time where they lay buried faded from view there was nothing to be done but look forward and to try, as impefectly as she might, to live in a way that might honor them. They had been such good people, after all, and had never hurt anybody. Dad's company was not the sort that put people out of their homes only to resell the land to millionaires, and he had always had a kind word for the drifters who would passed through town - along with an odd job for a fistful of yen. And Mom donated to charities, fed stray cats and worked in a preschool in a low-income neighborhood even when she could have accepted a better position. Heck, they had even adopted her - a redheaded no-name from nowhere, and made her feel like nothing but their blood for as long as she could remember. No, when it came down to it, it simply wasn't fair that the world had to be rid of them - even as so many other, worse people worse continued living. And they had been so happy. Kaoru felt the tears rising to her eyes, for the first time in days.

The sutra ended, and the mourners lined up to offer incense, with Kaoru, her uncle, and the rest of the Kyushu lot at the head of the procession. Kaoru was the first to approach the altar. She lit the stick of incense from the candle, and her eyes fell to her parents' faces. For a second it seemed that under the makeup they were merely asleep.

Be happy, she thought. The incense turned red-hot, burned for a spell, and then faded. Be happy and sleep - you deserve it. Don't worry about me. I'll muddle through somehow. After all, you've raised me well.

…

Kaoru had ridden with uncle Kenji in the funeral procession to the crematorium, and Hikaru's car had followed via an alternate route to escape detection. And now the time had come to see her parents off on what would truly be their last journey. The crematorium offered a special service: the family could stay and watch the coffins burn in a room with a big-screen TV set aside specifically set for that purpose. And while Kaoru's uncle had asked her several times if she was absolutely sure she wanted to stay, she had insisted that she was. She wasn't sure why she had done so. A part of her felt like her father's spirit still lingered somewhere close by, and would not want her to be a scaredy cat. Another part simply wanted to see things through. But more than that, as time went on she found herself functioning more and more on autopilot.

It would only be a box, after all, burning on a big TV screen. She'd seen them dead, the blood freshly washed from their faces. How much worse could it be?

The TV turned on and the coffins slid inside a large oven.

And then something snapped in Kaoru, harder and more definitively than it ever had done before.

Bodies. That's all they were. And yet, as the windows of the oven grew brighter and the shapes in the boxes began to squirm, it looked like they had come alive again, and were struggling, by some primal instinct, to hang on - if only for a second longer.

She hadn't seen them die. She was glad she hadn't had to. But she had not realized it until that moment.

Her throat began to close up. Not with tears, no - on its own accord, as if a hand, with skeletal claws for fingers, had clamped in a vice-like grip over her neck. And then the stars came - bright and neon like silent gunshots leaving bullet holes in the tapestry of her mind. They started out sparse, but quickly grew thicker. Before she knew it, it was all she could do to keep herself upright as she stumbled out of the room, down the hallway, and into a bathroom, shutting the stall door behind her just as the world went black.

…

When Kaoru came to, she wasn't sure how much time had passed. By all accounts, it was still daytime, as the sunlight still slanted through the window, and her head did not hurt - so she probably had not hit it as she fell. The side of her kimono had a few skid-marks, but that was the worst of it. She pulled out her phone - it was an hour and a half later. That would mean that the cremation would still be going on. Oh well - she probably had no need to check the several missed calls she had. The people who were trying to call her must have been just outside. Time to face the music. She would not go in that room again - that much was certain. But being MIA like that was downright rude, even if they might have anticipated the effect the cremation would have on her. She stepped out of the stall and adjusted her obi in the mirror. She then brushed - if somewhat ineffectually - at the skid-marks on her hip. Finally, she straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath.

It's alright. The whole thing's almost over.

She was halfway down the hall on the way to a room set aside for those who did not want to watch but still wanted to stay and visit when she heard voices coming through the open door.

" - So I had stepped out for a breath of air just an hour ago, and what do you think I saw the little minx doing?"

The speaker was aunt Mitsuko, uncle Kenji's wife, who always tended to speak louder than necessary on account of a bout of meningitis that left her partially deaf. And ordinarily, Kaoru might not have paid any attention - she knew the Kyushu branch of the family well enough to have heard rumors that aunt Mitsuko's hearing was far from the only thing about her that wasn't altogether there. But somewhere between the words "an hour ago" and "little minx," the statement gave Kaoru pause, and she stopped in her tracks just shy of the door to listen.

"I saw her getting in some rich man's Lexus!"

The listeners gasped, and tittered inaudibly in response.

"… With custom license plates and windows tinted dark as could be! Mind, my hearing might not be what it used to be, but my eyesight's still like a hawk's. It was a block down the street, but I saw it. And to think, before her parents' ashes were even cold!"

"And I saw her too, I can vouch," added a lower voice that Kaoru identified as that of great-aunt Chiyo, uncle Kenji's mother. "It just goes to show - I was right to oppose it all along. We all were. These orphanage kids, nine times out of ten they're bad stock, and bad blood will make itself known, sooner or later."

Kaoru's head began to spin again. She grabbed hold of the wall to keep upright.

"Yes, who's to say her TRUE mother wasn't a…" - the speaker, a third woman, lowered her voice, though Kaoru could imagine her expression only too well.

"Sayoko, Gods rest her soul, was far too kind, poor thing," added yet another woman, "Perhaps it's for the best that she's not here to see any of it."

Kaoru could feel the world crashing around her - its boulder-sized fragments landing inches away all around her. Her parents had warned her something like that might happen, of course. But so far it had always been merely in the realm of the hypothetical. She had never thought the day would actually come. At least not this soon, and not like this. And definitely not before - oh, if she didn't feel like she was five again, lost in the middle of a rainstorm, about to pee her pants, and crying for her mother, the irony would have been too much to handle.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed uncle Kenji coming out of the viewing room, and saw him catch sight of her. In fact, he was coming toward her - probably with a mind to join his wife and the others.

She would have to act fast, Kaoru thought. That - and hope to God that her uncle believed her.

...

When Kaoru emerged from the building halfway through the cremation, Hikaru immediately knew something was wrong. As she got back in the car, she slid across the seats with an uncharacteristic violence and stared - seething - at a single spot in space for a good minute.

"Hikaru," she finally said, "Did you come out of this car at all while I was in there?" Her voice was hollow. Not accusatory or angry - just hollow.

Oh. Crap.

"Uh… yeah, briefly," he replied in a small voice. "When I get nervous I get claustrophobic sometimes… I tried to call you but... I'm sorry."

Kaoru leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, breathing in and out several times - noisily and deliberately.

"Did something bad happen?" Hikaru asked in a quivering voice, "I KNEW I should've told the driver to go further away - around the corner or something. I'm so sorry, I didn't think…"

You don't think a whole lot, do you? - Kaoru wanted to scoff, unsure whether to laugh or weep at the hand fate had dealt her. But no. This wasn't the time. And perhaps she was better off knowing sooner rather than later.

"Never mind, let's go."

She grabbed his wrist, and pulled him out of the car after her.

…

Kaoru held Hikaru's arm at a somewhat painful angle, and he could not help wincing every step of the way as she marched him down the street, up the steps, and into the front hall of the mortuary. At any other time, he might have been amused. Kimono were not made for marching in - they were the original garment that encouraged the small, mincing steps girls still seemed to favor the entire nation over. But Kaoru did not seem to care, and as a consequence, the front of her robes billowed in an unseemly way until she hitched them up to stomp up the steps. And he did not dare laugh - for it was quite clear that she was dead-set on something, and would have marched over his head, his manhood, and a caterpillar tank for good measure if that's what it took to achieve her end.

As they entered the hall, his sister took a second to straighten her kimono around the chest, and to recover her queenly air before approaching a knot of people in a doorway. The people - a man and two women - had grown abruptly silent as the twins appeared, but Kaoru still bowed her head as if apologizing for the interruption.

"Uncle? Aunt? Great-aunt? Can I talk to you?"

Hikaru noticed that she spoke, quite emphatically, to only one of them - a portly man of a respectable age with kind if somewhat anemic features. And though she called each family member by title and honorific, she acknowledged their presence in no other way, and made no effort to hide the fact.

"Of course, Kaoru," the man replied. "Should we talk here - or somewhere else?"

"Here is fine. I have nothing to hide."

The man nodded, his amoeboid features folding into what, with him, probably signified indulgence. The women kept their eyes firmly glued on the three of them.

"Uncle," said Kaoru firmly, enunciating each syllable with a pointed force meant to leave no room for miscommunication. "This is my brother." She was still gripping Hikaru's arm, and pushed him forward.

"I only found him a little while ago," she continued. "We were separated at the orphanage and taken in by different families. He's been waiting for me in the car outside, and the only reason I didn't want to introduce him to you all was because I was waiting for the right time. I didn't want to steal my parents' moment by revealing such big news. But I changed my mind - because I've been made aware of certain rumors about me - that I've taken up with some rich man after my parents' death. And I just wanted to set the record straight. When I said I've been living with friends, I meant that I've been living with my brother and his family, and yes, I suppose they're important enough to have a car that might attract a bit of attention. But I am very, very disappointed that people jumped to conclusions and thought I was an immoral woman. Because my parents might not have given birth to me, but they raised me right. And it's an insult to their memory that people would talk about me like that without any reliable evidence… before their ashes were even cold."

She broke eye contact with her uncle, and let her eyes dart to the three women behind him, who by then had begun to look like they were being read their last rites. She still held Hikaru's wrist, and were he not quite so floored by the sight of fifteen-year-old Kaoru confronting four adults - all of a very distinguished age - he might have been afraid for the blood supply to his fingers.

"Kaoru," said the uncle, taking a step forward and placing a hand on her shoulder, which she did not acknowledge. "I think we need to take this conversation somewhere else."

He motioned her and Hikaru into the room whose threshold they had been standing on, and closed the door behind them. He invited them to take a seat, which they did, and settled in the arm chair just opposite. There was a tea set on the table, and he offered them both a drink, but refreshments were the farthest thing from the twins' minds right then, and they declined. The uncle folded his hands over his portly belly.

"Kaoru," he began, the same indulgent look of a gentleman of leisure in his eyes. "First of all, I am truly sorry for the malicious rumor you had to hear about yourself. I can only imagine how it must have felt. Especially on an occasion like this."

Kaoru remained silent, digging her fingers into the fabric of her kimono over her knees. The man continued.

"And I am very sorry you had to learn about it that way, but there is a reason why, when we spoke on the phone, I did not insist that you come live in Kyushu with us." He paused, and sighed with all the desperate gravity of an inexperienced doctor delivering a deadly diagnosis. "The fact of the matter is - and I am sure your parents have spoken to you about this already - but… The truth is, while there's a long history of adult adoption in our country, there are still many people who do not view adoption of children in a favorable light. In fact, when your parents decided to take you in, some of the older members advised them to move to a bigger city and start fresh, for fear of how it may be perceived in our town. And it's unfortunate, but many people in our own family still hold some of the same... attitudes."

He paused, and looked at the girl, whose face looked like it was chiseled from stone, her eyes fixed on a single point between the two of them.

"And that is why… That is why I didn't think you would be happy if you came to live with us. Because it would have come out, sooner to later. And I think…" He glanced at Hikaru, who, much like Kaoru, looked as if he had been stricken by lightning. The older man's eyes grew softer. "If you found someone who is your blood, and who you're happy with, then that's a very, very good thing."

Kaoru looked back at the man. Throughout his speech, she had not moved or made a sound, but Hikaru could see that she had been steadily breaking. By the end, she looked like a house torn down from the inside, with only the outside skeleton left standing to await demolition. And yet her pupils were still flint ready to catch fire.

"Uncle," she said, "My brother's family asked if I wanted them to adopt me - as an adult, at this point. And given what's come to light I've been thinking of saying yes. That is, if you don't mind not having someone to take over your business."

Hikaru caught his breath in surprise and his hand flew out onto her forearm on its own accord. If she was annoyed - or embarrassed - she gave no sign, and seemed to accept it. The uncle's sad, piggish eyes seemed to smile a bit.

"Kaoru," he said, "Your father was like a brother to me, and I know he always respected your wishes. If that is what you think will make you happy, I have no objection. The business will manage." He gave a wink and a low chuckle that echoed in his well-fed belly. "After all, I can adult-adopt someone too." He rose to his feet.

"I'm sorry, I did not catch your name," he said, extending a hand to Hikaru.

"Hikaru. Hikaru Hitachiin." The boy rose and clasped the hand. A wave of incredulity ran over the man's features, but was gone as quickly as it came, and he smiled wider, gripping Hikaru's hand firmly in both of his.

"Take good care of her, young man," he said. "She's worth her weight in gold, that one."

…

"I just… I cannot believe it… How COULD they?"

As they drove away from the crematorium, Kaoru sat in the back seat in much the same attitude as when he'd dropped her off at the temple - her arms folded over her chest, and staring into the darkening sky outside the window. Except this time she was at once so livid and so broken, she was barely coherent. Hikaru watched her from a respectful distance.

Over the past half hour, he had come to realize that things were about to get VERY inconvenient.

He had first gotten the inkling as he listened to her school her uncle and aunts, serving them just desserts for the faux-pas that was gossiping at a funeral. It had only grown stronger when he saw her take the rudder and declare that she was ready to be a Hitachiin. And it had solidified to the consistency of reinforced concrete as he watched her during the bone-picking ceremony, passing her parents' remains to her uncle with chopsticks as he deposited them in an urn, all the while talking to him continuously, forcefully and with unparallelled pride about the good sorts of people they were, and how she could only hope to carry out their legacy.

Kaoru wasn't just a pillar of strength - he had realized that day - she was a… powder keg. The sort of girl who, when ill-used, did not take it lying down but gave it right back, threefold. And he wasn't just in awe of her anymore. He didn't just want to protect her. He wanted to be her. No, better yet, he simply… wanted her. In fact, it took all he had not to pull her toward him, pin her back against the seats and make her his in the most primal way possible. It did not even matter that she was his sister. She felt like someone he was close with… but she did not feel like a sister. They had not grown up together after all, and perhaps that was why the checks that should have been in place were mysteriously missing.

He steadied his breath, crossed his legs for good measure, and took her hand - maintaining as respectable a distance as he could to keep himself from doing the unthinkable as he willed his thoughts in another direction.

"Kaoru… I know how you feel," he said.

She looked away from the window and toward him in slight consternation.

"The whole adoption thing. It's hard."

She raised her eyebrows. No shit.

"Has anything like this ever happened before?" he asked, squeezing her hand, "I mean, did anyone ever…. say anything before?"

The flint in her eyes turned to slumbering coals.

"No," she said. "This is the first time anyone ever said anything explicitly. I mean, anything like THAT. My uncle's right, my parents did try to prepare me. But I never thought it'd happen like that - or that it'd come from from them. I mean, we're not super close or anything, but I still thought they were family…" Her voice grew acrid. "I guess it all makes sense now… I just can't believe my mom and dad were basically run out of town for doing a good deed. It's… despicable."

Her mouth began to curl upward and her cheeks and chin started to twitch as tears stopped her throat. Hikaru felt an almost physical pain. He wanted to take her in his arms - except, no. He couldn't. He really, really couldn't. Not if he didn't want things to end in tragedy.

"Your parents… definitely didn't deserve that."

"They didn't. And it's kind of funny - I know they would've done anything for me. But I never realized the extent of the sacrifice they'd already made until now."

"They were good people, Kaoru," he squeezed her hand, doing his best to infuse his voice with the tenderness he ached to express otherwise. The impulse to protect and kiss away the pain was back, but the white-hot passion for the warrior queen had not faded, and it made for a deadly combination. "And so are you, because of them," he added. "No matter what anyone says. I can only guess how much it must've hurt, what they said about you today, but you held your own beautifully in spite of it. Your parents must've done something right."

She chuckled ruefully - so ruefully it might have been a sob.

"It doesn't matter if they did something right. They're still dead. And their family is still talking smack about them at their funeral." She chuckled again. "I mean - it's a FUNERAL. Who DOES that?"

"No, you're right. Nobody," he replied, "It's very bad form. But I still can't help noticing that that you're more upset by the the way your parents have been treated than the way YOU've been treated."

Outside, the sun had set, and the watery blue of twilight had deepened to the ink of night. The light posts illuminated the inside of the car, and Kaoru's shadow zoomed across the seats at periodic intervals.

"Yeah. I guess that's true."

"I think that really says something."

"Really. What do you think it says? That I'm selfless?"

"No - that you're secure in who you are." He took her hand in both of his, the better to anchor himself and to take his mind off the blood that was rising to his neck and his scalp. "That their insults can't touch you. And that you were a real family. Let me guess - your parents told you you were adopted early on so you'd have time to accept it, and told you that no matter what anyone said, you shouldn't listen because it's all lies?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what they said," she said slowly. "How did you know?"

"I know because mine didn't say anything like that. Not until it was too late, anyway."

She looked at him curiously, the residual disdain for her extended family gone from her eyes. It seemed she had suddenly grown aware of her hand in his, too; before, she had been far too deep in her own world to register it.

"Mine didn't tell me I was adopted until I was, like… ten," Hikaru said. "For the longest time there was this weird moratorium on the subject. I always KNEW I was different, I wasn't an idiot - it was obvious that everyone else's parents looked like them while mine didn't. And whenever people saw us together, they'd pause, and there'd always be this question they seemed to be itching to ask but were either too afraid or too polite to do it. And when I asked about it, all mom ever said was, 'genetics are complicated; sometimes kids don't look like their parents'. So I grew up feeling like there was something wrong with me and not really knowing why."

Kaoru listened in awe, the events of the day fading to the back of her mind almost in spite of her best efforts. These rich people really WERE weird… After all, Yuzuha did not seem like a naive woman. Surely, she could not have hoped her son would never put two and two together.

"I finally cornered them when I saw a framed newspaper clipping at someone else's house - it had a picture at an event, with the date, two months before I was born. My mother was in the picture, and she was as skinny as could be. I took a snapshot with my phone and showed her, and at that point she couldn't deny it anymore. I got so upset, I tried to run away from home that very night - to look for my real parents." He chuckled. "I didn't get very far, though. They caught me because I didn't know how to use the subway and was standing in front of the ticket booth looking confused…"

Kaoru had been in no mood for laughing, but she burst into giggles just the same.

"Well, geez, now I know why your mom is so paranoid about the subway…"

"Yeahhhh, that's part of it…." - he laughed - "When they brought me back, my mom started crying. She cried for about five minutes. It was the first time I'd ever seen her that way. I felt really bad for her - I guess I realized right then that I loved her too. So we finally had a conversation about me being adopted - the only real conversation we ever had about it. After that, I tried to listen to her more, and to be nicer to her in general. But the damage was already done. For instance - I really don't know what I would've done if someone said about me all the things they said today about you. I'd probably be out on a ledge somewhere."

"Aw, Hikaru…" Kaoru gasped and caught her hand right before it flew out to touch his face. Somehow, the image of Hikaru on a ledge drove every other thought clean out of her mind, and she grew frightened. "Uh, I mean…" she quickly backpedaled, "In that case, I really hope no one ever says anything bad about you…"

He smiled, and let himself shift a touch closer to her as he cocked his head.

"Nah, I don't think that's gonna happen," he said, "And I suspect I've got my mom to thank for that. She looks all Audrey Hepburn-like, but don't let that fool you - she's on a first name basis with actual Yakuza bosses, and if anyone goes against the family, she turns into a saber-toothed tiger. So anyone who says anything has a good chance of getting mauled."

The expression on his face as he concluded his statement set Kaoru wondering whether he listened to his mother for the reason he said he did. By all accounts, it was equally likely that he did not want to get caught between her claws - or simply thought she was really cool.

"Point is," he went on, "I guess she marches to the beat of her own drummer sometimes, and I'm willing to bet she adopted in part to make a statement. She's got enough social capital to be able to say - yeah, I did X or Y, sue me. But she never thought what impact it would have on me. And that's part of why I'm such a messed up motherfucker - no pun intended."

Kaoru gasped a little - that Hikaru, the seemingly nice boy that he was, would know such words and use them so freely seemed unthinkable. But the word sounded more intriguing on his lips than she liked to admit. And what was still more stirring was that they seemed to have something in common after all. Not just de facto, but in all actuality. It didn't matter that she had armed herself better against the stigma - the world saw them both in the same way. True, it was deucedly unfair that the Suzumiyas had been exiled for doing something controversial when no one could touch Yuzuha no matter what she did. But that didn't make Hikaru any less of a victim. And maybe, just maybe, this meant that she, Kaoru, would not end up being just a passing fad in his life, and would be of use to him - at the very least when it came to keeping him away from ledges.

"I guess the question remains," she said as the car turned abruptly into the driveway, a large flood of light flashing across the interior, "Why on earth did our parents adopts US, of all people, when we look so different from them? I guess if the stigma's really there, you'd want to protect your child by making it hard for people to assume things."

"I don't know," said Hikaru. The car came to a halt, the chauffeur pulled open the door, and he hopped our first, offering a hand to his sister. "I guess you can't help who you fall in love with, can you?"


	7. Johnnie and the Mountain

"Kaoru, come on, you can't just stay in bed all day."

"Go to hell, Hikaru."

Her brother had been right. Kaoru had held her own beautifully the day of her parents' funeral - until she got back to her room that night. Watching her parents burn and learning that her family had never accepted her had proven too much, and the moment the door closed behind her, Kaoru had collapsed in bed in her clothes, and had not gotten up since. Thirty-six hours later, every fiber of her body ached as if she had the flu, her chest felt like an elephant had sat on it, and she ardently wished her brother would go away and leave her in that well of a room to rot. But he didn't seem to want to: he stood over her, with his hands on his hips and that vaguely cocky, won't-take-no-for-an-answer expression, and had been for the last ten minutes.

"Come on, we've only got a couple more days until school starts. We have to make them count."

Kaoru groaned and rolled over on her side so she wouldn't have to face him. School. That was a whole other kettle of fish. It had been decided that she would be joining Hikaru at Ouran Academy. It only made sense; it was a good school. The best, in fact, and hardly a place for a delinquent like her, who scraped through by the skin of her teeth to get into Ouran Public. When she heard the news that she was in, she had wondered just how large a donation Yuzuha had to make. The Hitachiin clock tower, perhaps? Or the Hitachiin Olympic-size swimming pool? The place would probably be full of prodigies and princesses, and the thought alone made her want to burrow under a fort of pillows and sleep forever. Worse yet, Ouran Academy was the latest in a series of events that bore her steadily away from everything she knew.

"Alright, that's it. Up. It get that you're sad, but sleeping all day isn't going to make you feel any better. I've been reading up on this, and that's what it says -"

Hikaru tossed aside the covers and grabbed her by the legs, but she seized the edge of the mattress, and he has not gotten very far before having to dodge a kick aimed at the bridge of his nose.

"Hah! So we're a soccer player, too!" He chucked.

"Grrmmpffff." Kaoru snorted and pulled the covers back over her with a vengeance and curled into a ball.

She had to admit, Hikaru was excellent the day before. He had been so sweet that the tingling in her upper back as he waited on her hand and foot was the only thing that made her forget her misery for a while. When she woke up in just as foul a mood, at first he had left her alone. But then he had marched in at 1 p.m. bearing an oversized teddy bear he had been given for doing some pro-bono modeling when he was four, and climbed into bed, the bear between them in case Yuzuha or Yuzuke came in. He then listened to her cry and rant for a good two hours, holding her hands, and when she had no tears left, he brought her cookies. Despite being a connoisseur of food, he described himself as an appalling chef, and yet the cookies - chocolate chip with Nutella inside - were very good, and very gooey, and later in the day it turned out that Hikaru could make a passable pot of ramen as well. And then he had gotten the help to bring a TV set into Kaoru's room so they could watch cartoons.

But another night had passed and Hikaru wasn't having it.

"Alright, looks like you leave me no choice," Kaoru heard her brother's voice.

She had pulled the covers over her head, but sensed him walk away, and two seconds later there was an abrupt noise of metal sliding against metal. The underside of the covers turned slightly lighter. A creak - and a gust of wind drew across the bed. Another moment passed in silence, punctuated only by Hikaru's footsteps, and then -

HOLY FUCK SHIT ARSE HEADED HOLE….

Kaoru definitely heard the people singing. She heard them singing and damned them all to hell - along with Victor Hugo himself, and the entire Broadway cast of one of the world's most successful musicals.

At first, she did her best to stop her ears, but Hikaru turned up the volume. She pulled a pillow over her head, but the sounds still got through. As the choir continued to belt the apotheosis, promising that the blood of martyrs would irrigate the fields of France, Kaoru finally sat up in bed. Hikaru was standing next to the stereo, smiling the smile of a five-year-old who had painted his mother a picture and hoped she would find it brilliant.

"Hikaru," she seethed. "Do you want me to come over there and rip your head off?"

"I don't know" - his smile became the smile of Loki - "Do you want me to rip off my pants and start the revolution?"

Kaoru collapsed backward and clapped her hands over her face with a groan. The air fluttered through the sheets. Hikaru turned down the volume and came to sit by her side.

"Come on, Kaoru." He peeled her hands away from her eyes. "You know by now I'm a pretty stubborn motherfucker, and I'm not going to give up. So how about we make this fun."

She had been glaring up at him, but his smile was so infectious it was only a matter of time before it smoothed the furrow between her brows.

"How about this. What was your favorite thing to do with your parents?"

…

The path was a winding and steep one, and the afternoon sun had begun to slant and wink through the pines when the twins finally caught sight of the summit. They'd used the Kaoru method of finding a destination. They pulled up an X-marks-the-spot listing of results on an online map and picked one at random, and before two hours were up they were making their way up a seaside mountain trail in Kanagawa prefecture.

Earlier that afternoon, Hikaru had insisted they have the authentic Suzumiya experience, and to that end, they'd eschewed driving in favor of public transportation. Hikaru played the Asian tourist all the way through, taking furtive cell phone pictures of "cute" illustrations of what to do and what not to do on a train, and expressing half-mock, half-unadulterated amazement at the fact that each train seemed to have its own jingle, which played periodically over the intercom. Kaoru had looked a little marinated for the first half of the trip, but as the urban landscape thinned in favor of the glistening mirror of a bay, she had begun to respond in more than monosyllables. Once she looked more lively, Hikaru nestled his chin on the crook of her shoulder so they were facing in the same direction, and asked if she wanted to make a game of who could pick out more sailboats.

The hike itself turned out not only to be steep and serpentine, but also confusing - sign-posts were either positioned ambiguously between forks in the road or missing altogether, and google maps became useless a mile away from the train stop. If not for the help of a few seasoned old lady hikers, with broad-rimmed hats and nordic walking poles in hand, Hikaru joked that they might have had to give in and set up shop as resident holy hermits.

At the top, the ship-mast pines parted to reveal a rock outcropping overlooking the same bay and valley the train had cut through. A tiny temple with a cast-iron bell below the rafters stood a little way's away, and the sun hung above the horizon, touching everything with gold. The forest was as silent as if there wasn't a bird alive, and back at home Kaoru might not have liked it, but this stillness was far different from the purgatory of the Hitachiin house. Now that the city of cubicles and 24-hour in-n-out's lay as far away as a dream, she could not help feeling like she'd gotten out of bed after a long illness. As the breeze drew across the back of her neck - the brother, perhaps, of the one that rustled thought her sheets in the morning - she wanted to breathe with her whole chest. She'd wondered if the hike would make her miss her parents, and part of her had dreaded the ascent, but it her limbs lost most of their heaviness along the way, and now all she felt was something at once ageless yet intensely, comfortingly familiar about the silence that lay over the world like a blanket.

Hikaru was standing atop a rock, surveying the scene with the eye of Balboa laying claim to the Pacific.

"Well-well, what do you think, Kaoru?" he said. "I, for one, move to declare this mission 'totes worth it', even if it leaves my bottom end sore for the rest of the week."

"Well, it's not quite Macchu Picchu," Kaoru chuckled. "But I guess it's alright." She had not wanted to joke, but Hikaru's smile was a bright red fishing float, bouncing atop the waves, and the words had formed on her lips on their own accord.

"Too bad there's no one to take our picture." Hikaru hopped down from his perch. "I guess we'll just have to do a selfie."

"A selfie? Aren't those for posers and 12-year-olds?"

"Yeah, but I don't really know how to work the timed shot doo-hicky, so today we'll just have to be 12-year-old posers."

He pulled her into a hug, raised his cell phone to snap a picture of their faces against the brilliance of the bay, and pressed his lips against her cheekbone.

"Lovely. My first picture with my sister." He slid his finger across the phone's screen. "Facebook (tm) time!"

"Facebook?…" Kaoru swallowed.

"What, you don't want to?" He looked up from the phone screen.

"N-no, it's ok…" Kaoru buried her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and pulled her head into her shoulders. "It's just that…"

Until then, it had just been the two of them. And while their little world had grown both more vibrant and more like home by the day, the mention of facebook reminded her that there was still a big part of Hikaru's life she knew nothing about - a life she had not wanted to imagine existed, but that would burst upon her very soon, perhaps obliterating everything - and from which the mountaintop was only a temporary refuge.

"I guess I'm just a little worried…"

"About?"

"School. What your friends will think of me and such."

"Don't. They'll love you."

"Do they even know I exist yet? Or were you going to tell them with a facebook picture?"

"They don't. I've been holding my tongue when they came to visit me in the hospital, since I wasn't sure what was going to happen and what you would've wanted." He grinned. "As for the picture, that IS kind of what I was thinking, but to be honest I'm kind of torn. I both want to brag about you to everyone who'll listen and hide you away so I can have you all to myself."

Kaoru made no reply, but looked no less anxious, so he tapped the surface of phone with a laugh. "Ok, how about this. This'll go into the private collection for now, and we'll have the dramatic unveiling of the Kaoru come Monday. That way you'll have a couple more days to get used to the idea."

He clapped her on the shoulder and turned on his heel, "Come on. Let's climb that thing over there and ring the bell. It's a little too quiet around here."

…

They shrine was all but abandoned, and they climbed a steep staircase behind the altar to the second level, which stood open to the air like a watchtower. Hikaru spent a few minutes inspecting the thick-walled, lazy-looking bell before concluding that there were no tools in the vicinity to make it toll, and settled down, a might dejected, next to Kaoru. Her legs were dangling over the edge as she stared into the distance, hands balled in her pockets. He gazed at her intently, and noticed that she looked, once again, like one of the characters from the old stories who were capable of sending out their spirits to do their bidding, leaving the shells of their bodies behind. He imagined Kaoru's spirit dancing in the air above the precipice.

"Whacha thinking, sis?"

"Do you think we're closer to them now?" she asked. Her eyes did not leave the horizon. The sun was beginning to sink, its cusp bobbing against the water, the surface ablaze with its rays.

"I don't know." He pulled his knees up to his chest. "Maybe. To be honest, I've never really thought about it."

"Me neither. But it's a nice thought. That gravity reverses when you die, and you fall into the sky and stay there."

"And turn into stars, like the gods and goddesses, right?"

"Yeah."

She turned away from the horizon, and the bright imprint of the sun hung between them.

"I miss them, Hikaru."

"That's perfectly natural, Kaoru." Heck, I miss them too - he thought - even though I've never met them.

"It wasn't fair that they had to die." Her voice sounded ashen.

"No, it's wasn't."

"They were so happy. Who knows what they are now."

Hikaru sighed. She looked thin and pained, folded in on herself - like muscle stretched over too much bone. He wanted to take her in his arms, but thus far he had restricted himself to touching her only when he was sure that bowling her over would have required too violent of an effort, or when there were witnesses. That way, if his instincts got the better of him she'd be in a position to fight back. But if he touched her now and things went south, there was no word for what that would make him. Her hand lay between them, heartbreakingly white, and he felt an almost physical pain as he fixed his eyes on the wooden planks beneath it.

"I guess that's why people invented all those stories about afterlife and reincarnation, Kaoru. To make themselves feel better. But whatever the case may be, I think there's nothing we can do for them now except put one foot in front of the other and hope we meet again someday."

He looked up, and her eyes were waiting for him, soft and sad and just as pale-golden as the decline of day itself.

"You really believe that?"

"Heh. As someone smarter than me once said, I'll believe in anything that gets me through the day, be it a prayer or a bottle of Jack*."

(*He's paraphrasing Frank Sinatra).

"Jack?"

"Yeah. Jack Daniels. One of my good friends, actually. That and Johnnie Walker. There've definitely been times when they were all that kept me truckin'."

Kaoru looked like her spirit had returned, quite decidedly, from bobbing over the precipice, and settled into an incredulous expression on her face.

"In fact, I brought Johnnie on this hike with me."

Because, Goddammit. Strong Kaoru. Small, sad, doe-eyed Kaoru. Stubborn Kaoru. Meditative Kaoru. Slightly naive Kaoru… The Kaorus were emerging far too quickly, and he was mad about them all, the feelings layering thick atop each other. Before long he'd need something to steady his nerves. Not too much, of course - not so much that it'd make him do anything stupid - but just enough to take the edge off.

He reached into the pocket of his vest and extracted a flask.

Kaoru's eyes grew wide.

Dear God - the thought flashed across her mind - He swore, he drank… What else did he do? God damn these rich people….

"Where did you get that?"

"Oh, my parents entertain a lot." He smiled a sliver, unscrewing the cap. "Sometimes they don't finish their bottles, so I help them. They don't KNOW, of course. But I come and siphon off the remains."

Kaoru searched the corners of her mind for even a shred of judgment, but found none. It was quite illegal, to be sure, but all she felt was surprised that Hikaru would even want to do such a thing. Her own parents had, for about a year now, ceremoniously poured her a glass of watered-down Umeshu every week or so, and acted as if it was something special because only adults were allowed to have it. But beyond a feeling of warmth in her fingers and toes, she had never understood what the fuss was about.

"How does it feel?" she asked tentatively.

Hikaru leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows and stretching out his legs, and brought the flask to his lips. He closed his eyes as the contents scorched his throat and slid down his belly.

"Hurts at first, but then it feels very, very good."

He opened his eyes, and realized - with a curse that almost made it to his lips - that it hadn't worked. The burn had spread through his chest and relaxed the flutter in his lungs and stomach. But Kaoru was even more beautiful now, her torso twisted halfway to face him, the drawstrings of her hoodie dangling in the line of the sun like the tassels of a charm. The curve of her lip and the angle of her chin were thrown into sharp relief, and the fingers of light caressed the skin between her jaw and chest like an invisible lover.

Great - he thought, quelling and stuffing away the pleasure that had risen to his face. Now he'd have to take even more care to stay away from her, dancing and pirouetting around in circles when all he wanted was to make them collide. He could see her chest rise and fall as the temerity in her eyes was chased away by what he could only peg as…

Suddenly, he felt as naked as if she could see right through him.

"May I try?" - she reached out a hand.


	8. Hikaru and Kaoru

"Oh, Hikaru, I've never been both so happy and so sad in my life," Kaoru cried as she waltzed into her room, throwing up her hoodie and letting it fall where it would. " I want to do something… damaging. Maybe we really should've gone to party with those university students…"

"NO, Kaoru, partying with the university students would've been a categorically bad idea." Hikaru chuckled. He was following close at her heels, and his head was slightly abuzz, but he was less drunk than he usually got given the amount he'd consumed, the effect of the alcohol attenuated by the self-imposed imperative to keep an eye on Kaoru. As it turned out, he hadn't tried to keep it together in vain. Though Kaoru had probably been too euphoric or too inexperienced to notice, the university students they'd met on the train back had looked like they were divvying her up in their minds, and one of them - he was fairly sure - had his eye on him as well.

"No?" Kaoru spun around on her heel, arms akimbo. "Well - geez, I don't really see why not. We could all be dead tomorrow. It could all end, just like that, and then someone'll be picking OUR bones, too. Life itself is a goddamn choking hazard, if you think about it."

She paused for a few seconds, a silly, desperate smile painted across her face as she laughed noiselessly at the ceiling, then spun around again, and ran to the balcony. The doors were still unlocked, and she threw them open to let in the cool night air. The lights and the faint music of the cocktail party on the patio floated up to where they were, and Kaoru ran to the parapet, her brother following close behind. She leaned back against the bank of concrete and arched her back, digging her fingers into it as if making a move to jump up, but Hikaru put his hands on hers just in time.

"You know," she said, speaking to the sky with a laugh on her lips, "Do you ever feel so awful, all you want to do is dance the night away?"

She jerked her head back. "Do you?"

Hikaru had not expected her to confront him so suddenly. As they made their way home, Kaoru had been uncommonly exuberant, running in circles and telling story after story, rarely finishing one before going off on a tangent only to come back to something he thought she was done discussing an hour ago. In fact, she had gotten happy quite quickly after taking a drink of Johnnie Walker, even though the first swallow had made her wrinkle her nose and squeeze her eyes shut as if in pain. But she never seemed to have been talking directly to him until now - and hadn't looked at him once, that much was certain. But now that she did, she really did look like she had one day to live, and knew it all too well.

He felt a painful tug in his chest that echoed in his throat. Fuck it. He'd tried - he'd tried all day. All week. He really had. And somewhere, on some register, he hoped that would add up in his favor. He let go of her hand, took her chin, and kissed her.

Kaoru's eyebrows shot up and she stifled a gasp. For a moment Hikaru was not sure what to do. He half-expected her to pull away and smack him. It would have only made sense. But a second went by and she did not, so he let himself slowly close his eyes and run a tentative hand up her arm, drawing her closer and gently nibbling her lips as if they were a delicious desert. It was not difficult to imagine. They were just as warm, and had a gentle give, and were almost… sweet. He felt her shoulders sag and her mouth go slack against his thumb as he let his tongue venture in to have a taste as well.

He scanned his thoughts for even a hint of a suggestion that this was wrong - that she was his sister, after all. But, oddly enough, what turned his head the most - literally turned it, making him feel dizzy from a rush of blood up his neck - was that it did not feel wrong at all. It only felt warm, and comfortable, and tender - as tender and velvet-textured as the Kaoru that only seemed to come out under his fingers.

And yet - Kaoru's shoulder blades had sunk a few degrees, and her mouth had gone soft, but the rest of her was still frozen, as if she was waiting for something, breath withheld. He pulled away, and saw that she looked disoriented to the extreme.

"Is this weird? Should I stop?" He raised a hand to his lips - which were feeling naked without hers already.

"N-no…" she said. "But if you're doing this out of pity" - She pulled away, turning her head and covering her eyes.

"Kaoru, no - "

But she was already walking away, and had slammed one of the panels of the door behind her before he had time to blink.

When he walked in, she was seated on the bed, her arms crossed tightly over her stomach. He turned on the bedside lamp, and the darkness scurried into the corners.

"Kaoru, please…"

"No. I know how it is," she said without looking up, "I'm sad, we're both a little drunk. You thought you'd make me feel better. But you're way out of my league. It'll only make things awkward."

Hikaru just barely kept his jaw from dropping. Of all things, the question of "leagues" was what concerned her most about this scenario?

"Kaoru, you DO realize how bizarre that sounds?" he said. "How can I be out out of your league when we look exactly the same?"

"Aurgh, but that's the PROBLEM, don't you see?" she moaned, sprawling backwards over the comforter. "You're a beautiful boy. But no one in their right mind would call me a beautiful girl. I'm tall as a construction crane - for a girl, anyway; my shoulders are broad, my breasts are nonexistent…"

"Tall as a construction crane?" Hikaru chuckled. "Wait a second, I've gotta write that one down." Tipsy Kaoru seemed to have a creative streak when it came to similes.

But Kaoru was sobbing dryly - grimacing at the ceiling with her hands over her eyes, and Hikaru quickly killed the smile and came to sit beside her, drawing her upwards and hugging her around the shoulders. She sagged under his touch.

"Shh, shh," he whispered. "Crying's not allowed in this room, alright?" He took her hands in his and kissed them, each knuckle in turn, as she pulled back against him - though none too effectually. "You're beautiful. And I didn't kiss you out of pity. I wanted to."

"Bullshit," she muttered, turning away.

Hikaru sighed. Evidently, words were useless, so he ran the back of his knuckle across her jaw, down her neck, and over her clavicle, swallowing as the pearlescence of her skin in the cuddle-warm yellow light made him remember things both primal and gentle - things from long before he had even learned to form thoughts. Suddenly, even the tight, percolating urgency that had formed in his chest and started to radiate to his thighs felt like it could wait. For a minute, nothing existed but the carved whorls of the foot of the bed, and the peach-colored lampshade, the bedspread, and the bubble of warmth that bound them together.

She truly was beautiful. He had thought so from the beginning, before he had even gotten past the need to convince himself, every time he looked at her, that no, he hadn't gone mad and wasn't seeing himself dressed in drag and going about his daily business from afar. And her lack of a feminine figure was hardly a lack. While other girls were perpetually in limbo between wanting to show off their assets and apologizing for them, Kaoru didn't seem to be aware of them at all. Together with her long-limbed elegance, it imparted a dawn-of-the-world innocence to her beauty that made him wonder if she'd been raised in society at all, and wasn't a transplant from some isle where time had stood still for a thousand years.

His hand settled over her breast, but all he felt was lace and a thick pad of foam beneath it. Kaoru gave a small moan - almost a squeak, and turned her head farther away, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Kaoru, you don't need this bullet-proof vest…" - he said with a shile.

She turned abruptly back to him, and her eyes were desperate.

"Yes, I do."

"No." He pulled himself closer to her, and drew her into another kiss, this time wrapping his arms around her - one around her shoulders, the other cradling the small of her back - which, like magic, made her arch her torso just a bit, distraught though she was.

"In fact," he whispered against her lips, his voice thickening as a dense fog of blood overwhelmed his mind, and struggled to imagine anything but Kaoru sporting a far from safe-for-work aspect… "Can we take it off? And burn it?"

Kaoru pulled away as if she had been scalded.

"No, I can't… Please..."

Hikaru remained frozen with his hand halfway extended. She slumped her shoulders as if to hide what lay between them.

"I'm… sorry. I didn't mean to…" He stuttered, blinking in an effort to chase the fog from his mind. She wasn't into it - clearly. What was he THINKING?

"No… It's just that…" Kaoru's voice grew swollen. "I just… They're so…"

"They're lovely, Kaoru. In fact, just the thought of them is enough to make me do terrible things."

"No. Don't lie," she spat. "No man alive has looked at them and liked what he's seen. And once when I had a booth at the school art fair, some douche-bag asked me if I was collecting money for breast implants."

Her voice broke and she burst into tears. She wept for a good minute - pitifully - as Hikaru took her in his arms and cradled her head against his chest. She let him. A weeping Kaoru felt as if she had no bones.

"Well, you know," he said once her sobs quieted, "We could talk to some of mom's Yakuza friends and have him murdered."

She looked up, and he saw the corners of her mouth twitch a bit. Her cheeks were still wet, and he pressed his lips to them, lingering as he tasted salt. He smoothed his hand up and down her back, suspending it by the thumb from the bump under her T-shirt.

""Cuz he's a rube and moron. I doubt you were even wearing a bra the day I met you, and you looked perfect."

"Pervert," she snorted.

"Well, look… someone's smiling," he said, planting a butterfly kiss on each of the corners of her mouth. "And I'm not a pervert. I'm just a guy. We notice these things."

He kissed her again before she had time to protest, letting his mouth slide slowly and sensuously over hers as his tongue took a moment to play with its mate. He then trailed his lips down her jaw, neck, and shoulder, sucking a bit of skin with every touch and drinking in the shiver that would steal across her back every time. If her lips had tasted sweet, here she smelled even sweeter - an intimate scent of girls' bedrooms and warm bodies before a shower. She wasn't shrinking away anymore, and was no longer tense - just shivering slightly as his fingers left behind eddies of gooseflesh on skin so warm it was almost steaming. His hand crept up under her shirt in the back, and paused over the same bump - this time unobstructed by cloth.

Shoot. He really didn't know much about those things, and hardly knew the first thing about taking them off, much less with one hand. It did not take much fumbling and picking for him to conclude that it was a cruel joke, that Kaoru was probably sewn into the damn thing, and that she was….

Laughing.

It was a noiseless laugh - a snicker into the hand, but she was laughing nonetheless. If it was anyone else, Hikaru would have considered using his fists as a means of communication. But right then, all he wanted was to die.

He pulled away and covered his face with his hands.

"I'm sorry, Kaoru." He had to work to keep his voice from breaking. "Male downfall…"

He'd been expecting her to be laughing all-out by the time he looked up. He'd even imagined her falling back against the covers and arching her back with mirth splayed all over her features. But she was not, and it was his turn to gasp, for the first thing that met his gaze was Kaoru's midriff, tapering ever so slightly into a slender waist under a shirt hiked up halfway. Her arm was behind her, and she had a smile on her face. Her task done, she extracted her hand and sat back, the bra sagging forward under her shirt as the straps emerged under the sleeves.

"Kaoru…"

Leave it to the lovely Kaoru Suzumiya soon-to-be Hitachiin, he thought, to turn things completely on their head just as he'd come to accept that she would be playing the shrinking violet until the end.

She did not reply, and he shifted back toward her, drawing them both down so their heads lay side by side on the pillows. He brought her face to his, and closed his eyes as he wrapped his lips, once again, around the softness of hers. This time, she kissed back, the flick of her tongue making warmth radiate down his spine. As if on autopilot, he reached his hand under her shirt and began to slide it up again. Up the tightness of the waist, to the sharp line of her ribs, quivering and betraying a fear she was hiding far better than she had been, to the piece of foam that lay ineffectually in the way. His fingers crept under it, and Kaoru drew a quick breath, but he pulled her tighter to him, and let his palm cup the mound of flesh under the foam. It was barely bigger than his own chest muscles - he owned that much - but the gentle give was something new. He pulled away and propped himself up by the elbow, the better to watch her reaction. He kneaded the flesh gently, and she squeaked a bit, just as before, shifting to squeeze her thighs together.

"Does that - feel good?" he asked slowly.

Goodness knew, the softness in his hand - and the rest of Kaoru, so submissive and shy under his fingers, and yet the very surface of her skin so responsive to his touch - was making him feel like he was standing on the prow of a ship with the wind in his hair.

She nodded, her eyes flashing that despairing look again, as if imploring for something she did not know the name of.

"I want to make you feel good," he whispered. "You're beautiful, Kaoru. And I… You deserve it."

She did not answer. From the moment he had kissed her, everything had felt surreal. Her mind, so restless and so in flight until a moment before then, had emptied of all thoughts except one: that this couldn't really be happening. Except for the one moment when he'd looked so cute and confused, stumped by the bra, that she couldn't help but take pity on him, it was all she could think. That this was her brother, and brothers didn't do this. Never mind, no, that wasn't even the worst of it. Here was this BOY, this handsome, rich boy - in all probability a ladies' man - and she'd been thrown together with him quite by chance, only to develop a vague, bizarre crush that she'd refused to indulge, given how it went against the most basic rules of biology and society. And now he was telling her she was beautiful - which she did not believe - and touching her like… like THAT? It was a case of "be careful what you wish for" and no mistake, and sent her mind down paths that she was afraid to pursue. So much so that it almost comforting to focus on the other predicament she was faced with.

All night - nay, all day - she had been a pendulum, swinging between the highest highs to the lowest lows, only to have the kiss open up a whole new bag of insecurities she had hidden behind her bouncy facade for as long as she could remember. She had never felt girl-enough, as if by some cruel twist of fate she had inherited two X chromosomes, but missed the genes they were supposed to contain entirely. No amount of frilly accoutrements could hide it. They only hurt matters, and made her look like a cow with a saddle on her back, and she purposefully grew out her hair so she could have at least one thing underscore the fact that she was female. Boys asked her out, to be sure, but never the most handsome or most popular ones - and somehow she had managed to convince herself that it was because she was THAT GIRL, the quirky one who painted hieroglyphics into the soccer field at night - not because she was beautiful. And then, to be kissed by a boy who had caused such uncomfortable stirrings inside her - hang the fact that he was technically her brother…

In fact, it had to be a joke. Especially since he WAS her brother. Knowing him, it was right up his alley.

She looked up at him, and he was gazing curiously into her eyes, his fingers paused over a nipple. She felt another shock of pleasure course through her stomach to that odd spot between her legs, melting into wetness as a blush betrayed her feelings. Suddenly, she found herself thinking that when the elusive, transformation chance she'd spent her life chasing put a handsome man in your bed and made him look at you as if you were God's gift to humanity, you could do better than to ask questions. After all, had she not been through enough to be justified in indulging herself? Wasn't forgetting what she had been after all these hours? She had no way to know if he meant what he said, or if he was drunk. But weren't they each other's blood, and hadn't they gone through quite a bit together? If this ended up too inconvenient come morning, surely they would be able to talk it out.

… Which was some twisted logic there, wasn't it? Trying to justify letting more ridiculousness into your life because come morning you'll magically be able to handle it? How many drinks did you even have, you silly girl? And how long ago? How long does alcohol even take to wear off, anyway?

She resolved - for the moment - to keep her eyes firmly on Hikaru's face as she reached her arm out to the small of his back - the tight muscles making her catch her breath even as she imagined them - and slid a leg over his.

His lips spread skyward and he took her cue, shifting to contour his body against hers and running his hands with insistent urgency down her hips. She closed her eyes and let the gravity shift as her shoulder blades pressed into the mattress. His lips were on hers, and his kisses had grown sloppier, hungrier; his hands - how many hands did he HAVE, anyway? - were back on her shirt, and pushing upward. And his hips against her thigh - oh, dear - if there was anything less ambiguous… The tightness that had echoed and melted between her legs was back, yearning to be stroked away, and for a split-second her determination faltered.

No.

Destiny had smiled on her, and given her a chance to open the door to something new. Never mind that things were quickly turning too indecent for words. It was only Hikaru. The boy who baked cookies as sweet as himself. The Peter Pan and the practical joker. How many times had he already held her hand? And hugged her around the shoulders, and pressed his lips softly as if by accident against her cheek? From the moment he had first held her hand in the hospital bed, only to have his heart rate and blood pressure spike for all in the room to see, things had been heading down this road, and she had been too busy repressing her own indecent desires to notice.

To feel him breathing heavily against her, his irises two thin rims and his fingers threatening to leave their mark on her back and thighs come morning - it was all too obvious a conclusion of events. And it stirred things in her that were darker and more sweet than anything she had ever known before. Suddenly, the happiness rose in her blood again, and she felt like Carmen strutting down a stage - brazen, barefoot, rose in hand - and perfectly, uncaringly aware of the effect she had on men.

"Kaoru," she heard her brother whisper. "Tell me what you want me to do. Can I kiss them?"

Oh, yes. Yes, let's do this, Hikaru.

She smiled and raised her arms.

He swallowed visibly, a shiver stealing over his cheekbones and jaw. He pulled back, and pushed her shirt upward and over her head, the bra following quickly. She had to stifle another pained squeak, and fought the urge to cover up her lacking feminine physique as best she could. He seemed to have guessed her thoughts and caught her wrist with a smile.

"Ah-ah, Kaoru," he said. "Shame's not allowed in this room either. Besides, I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. I - You're - lovely."

He looked unabashedly into her face, and let his eyes stroke down to the two hillocks of smooth white flesh before rising back up again. Kaoru faltered. Carmen was gone in a flash, and her skin grew enflamed against the air of the room as a stinging knot formed in the pit of her stomach.

"You look far better this way than in any dress."

He moved to nestle down beside her, and she saw his hand begin to reach for his belt out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly, she felt like the floor had disappeared from under her.

"Hikaru… Wait."

Her hand shot to his. He stopped short and raised his eyebrows.

"We're brother and sister," she said. "Maybe we should… Draw the line somewhere."

He looked back at her and was silent for a few moments. His chest rose and fell under the yellow light, and she saw the line of the cotton fuzz, illuminated brightly.

"Kaoru," he finally said, raising a hand to touch her chin. "Do you honestly only feel for me as you would for a brother?"

She shook her head, fixing her eyes on her knees.

"Well, I don't either. Biology's one thing but feelings are another. Whenever I'm with you, I feel like I'm home and I don't need anything else. So maybe tonight we can just try to be Hikaru and Kaoru, not brother and sister."

She remained silent, her hand clasped around his wrist, then slowly let go.

He smiled, sat back on his knees, and started to pull off his shirt. She watched him, her mind reeling from what had transpired as the tried to steady her breath. He did not just want her. He felt deeply for her. She shuddered to admit it, but it made her so happy she wanted to cry. Never mind if this was crazy, and fueled by liberal amounts of Johnnie Walker, and that they had been onetime cohabitants of a womb. She wanted it all; she'd handle it all, and oh, sweet mother of Jesus -

For a split second, she wondered, for the umpteenth time, how on earth he could have wanted her as the light fell upon the most unambiguous proof yet that he could have had anyone. But the thought was quickly muscled off a precipice. Her breath caught in her throat, betraying the warmth that was spreading between her legs.

Hikaru began to snicker.

"Well! Look at you. If I'd have known the effect it would have, I would've taken off my shirt sooner."

"Uh…" Kaoru struggled to force her voice through vocal cords suddenly engorged with blood rushing to her head.

"Maybe I should just stop wearing my shirt altogether."

"N-no, Hikaru…" she almost whimpered. "If you do that, I won't be able to function as a productive member of society."

He settled down next to her, and her pulse rose violently over every inch of her body.

"Kaoru as an unproductive member of society," he mused. "I think I'd like to see that." He was facing away from the lamp on the bedside table and his eyes looked like velvet. The gentle yellow light threw the muscles of his back into a relief that made Kaoru's throat go dry and her spine turn to water.

He cupped her breast and brought his lips to her nipple, and she almost bucked backwards. His tongue made her feel at once like she was being cut with an ice pick, and like an ache she had had forever was being coaxed into a voluptuous, full-bodied pleasure. She let her fingers sink into his hair and skim down his neck and back. Quite by accident, one of her nails scraped his skin as another ragged wave of electricity shook through her.

He broke contact and looked up.

"Oh, sorry -" she whispered. She was about to shrink away, but he smiled, planting a kiss on her breast.

"No, do that again. Harder."

She complied, and he arched his back against her hand. She was still afraid to touch him where she wanted - which was everywhere. But if his gaze was adoring before, as she traced designs into his back his flesh all but melted under her fingers, and the sounds he made made her wonder if women were misguided in offering themselves to men wholly when all they had to do was scratch their backs.

"Ahh, Kaoru," he caught her eye, gasping between waves of pleasure. "I really ought to reciprocate somehow. It's not fair that I'm the only one who gets to feel this good."

She paused, letting her fingertips hover over the whorl of baby hair between his shoulderblades. He shifted upwards, and draped his hand over her, scraping a fingernail down the middle of her back. The bemused expression on her face made him stop fairly quickly, however.

"Not doing it for you?" He smirked. "Okay, I guess I'm a freak of nature…"

"Yeah, I think we knew that already," she reparteed with a smile that showed off her dimple.

Hikaru returned the smile and bit his tongue. He was fairly sure it wasn't an appropriate setting to mention it, but he had always wondered if he liked his back scratched because Yuzuha had done it to him when he was little. He blinked a few times, quickly, to evict his mother from his mind and re-focus on the matter at hand.

"Okay. How about this instead?" He brought his lips back to hers and trailed them down her chin, then her neck, then between her breasts, pausing to kiss each one as if they were good friends already. Her thighs tightened as he got to the line of her underwear.

"D-down there?"

"Sure." He paused with his face hovering between her hips, and snapped at the elastic playfully. "Everything I've ever heard on the subject suggests that being kissed down there is supposed to feel really good."

But - but - but! - her mind screamed as she had to physically restrain herself from kicking him away - I've never taken my pants off around anyone! I've only ever had my pants off for any appreciable amount of time in the shower!

"It's okay, don't worry." He winked. "There's a first time for everything."

He began to kiss over her pants first, massaging gently between her legs, and, embarrassed though she was, suddenly her mind was far too occupied with the sensation to think of anything else. It was almost ticklish yet strangely satisfying, as if he was scratching an itch she did not know she had. The odd little button higher up tugged with more insistence than before, and when he brushed a finger against it she drew a breath that was almost a yelp.

"What do you say?" he asked after a minute, having watched her expression change from frightened to pleasantly incredulous, "Off-time?"

She nodded breathlessly.

"Okay, starting the revolution in 3, 2…" He slid both her pants and underwear down, threading her legs out of them, and in an instant she felt far warmer and far more charged with electricity than before. Her face, in all probability, turned red as a furnace. Hikaru's face snapped back up.

"Well! That answers that," he grinned with a show of mock nonchalance. "Looks like the basement is as rust-colored as the roof."

"HIKARU!" she gasped. But he was staring at her with such calf-like winsomeness she could not help but crack a smile. "I gotta say, though" - she laughed - "It can't be that big a revelation. You probably could've guessed it based on the look of your own, uh, basement."

"Well, yeah," he replied. "But who knows, we might look really similar, but our DNA is not EXACTLY identical - it can't be; we're different genders. So for all I know, you could've been blonde down there."

She was about to reply, but his smile had grown broader, and she gasped as she felt a finger slide up to where it was wet, her back arching against the pillows on its own accord. As the finger teased, suddenly every inch of her missed being enveloped by him, and the feeling echoed deep between her legs. And then the warmth of a mouth wrapped around her other lips, and a sigh broke from her lips as her fingers balled into the sheets. She closed her eyes and let the sensation vibrate through her, taut and tight and full like the lament of a violin string. It felt like a long and pleasant eternity before she felt a breeze downstairs and opened her eyes to find a Hikaru back up beside her, looking far less keen on joking around and far more set on devouring her with his eyes.

"Kaoru," he whispered. "I want you. Like that."

A violent shock bolted up her spine.

"But, Hikaru... I'm a -… I mean, I've never -"

"That's okay." He pulled her to closer and pressed his lips against hers. "Are you afraid it'll hurt?"

"No."

"Are you afraid it'll change things?" His eyes were big and smoldering. "It might, but it won't change us, at least not in a bad way. We'll still be Hikaru and Kaoru, and I know I'll still feel the same way."

He cradled her hands in his and began to kiss them, and her elbows sagged as her breath grew more regular. She leaned back against the pillows and parted her knees a bit, nodding and looking to the side as he reached for the closure of his pants and positioned himself between her thighs.

"I'll try and go slow; tell me if it's too much."

"Okay."

He began to kiss her lips and knead her breast with one hand, and then pushed in. He had not wanted to go quite so fast - and Kaoru's face spasmed. She squeezed her eyes shut, wrinkling her nose.

"Ouch," she said in a small voice.

His fingers dug into her shoulders. Her heart knocked against his ribs.

"Are you okay? I'm sorry…"

"Yeah," she whispered, barely above a breath. "Don't move, though. I need to get used to it for a second."

Don't move? It was a tall order. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on breathing as pleasure crashed over him like breakers, demanding to be ridden.

"You're brave," he said, pressing a kiss on each of her cheeks.

Gradually, her muscles began to unclench, and even as her face worked spasmodically he noticed for the first time how powder-soft her skin was. The part of him below the waist ached to charge on and take no prisoners, but the part above suddenly wanted to cry.

He was in more pleasure than he had ever been before, but what was he supposed to do, obey his instincts as she gritted her teeth and waited for it to be over? Only porn could make that kind of thing look fun.

"Kaoru… I'm sorry…"

She opened her eyes.

"This isn't fair at all… I'll stop."

Her eyebrows and lips were still twitching.

"No, Hikaru, don't…"

"This feels really good, but I can't keep hurting you. You don't like this at all. I can tell."

"No." She raised a hand to touch his cheek. "It's okay. Really. I'm sorry I don't know enough about pleasing you…"

"Pleasing me, Kaoru?" - he choked on a laugh - "You please me just by existing -"

"I want you to be happy. I didn't say anything before, but I feel the same way. When I'm with you, I don't need anything else."

It was all he could do to bury a sob in his words as he hugged her in a tighter embrace.

"Oh, God, Kaoru, you're an angel. I don't deserve you."

She smiled against his lips and pushed herself up on her elbows as she lay a hand on his hip.

"Go ahead. It hurts a little, but it doesn't feel wrong. I like being… filled up, and it felt plenty good before, when you… you know..."

Slowly, he began to move again. She quivered as before, and it was impossible to tell if her sighs were from pleasure or from pain, but as she reached to run her fingernails down his back, he knew he was done for.

"Oh… God… Kaoru" - the words shot from his lips between gasps - "I don't think this is going to last much longer… I'm sorry…"

Her breath stalled and she squeezed tighter against him.

"I'll come outside, alright? I don't want to get you in trouble -"

A spasm ran through him, as if he'd broken his back, and she suddenly felt very empty. A new warm wetness ran down her inner thigh. When she looked up, he was kneeling between her legs, breathing heavily, and she reached for the sheet to wipe herself, still not daring to look at the aftermath below her waist. It no longer hurt - it just felt numb, as did the rest of her, perhaps from shock. And that was just as well, because she could hardly bear how naked she felt, and how much she ached, down to the pit of her stomach, for him - and only him - to come and hold her. She felt her limbs grow overwhelmingly heavy as he settled back down and folded himself around her, pulling the covers over them both.

"Kaoru, do you want me to do anything else for you?…" She felt his fingers inch toward the crease of her thigh, and shook her head.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Kaoru, I lo -"

She turned to him, and saw that his eyes were full. The breeze quivered over the top of the covers. Underneath, it was very warm, and it was hard to tell whose limbs were whose. He drew his fingers across her chin.

"I lost you once, Kaoru," he whispered. "I never want to lose you again."


	9. Bulletproof Logic

When Kaoru opened her eyes, her mouth felt like a desert.

Crap - so she had overdone it after all, assuming this was what a hangover felt like.

She rolled over with a groan and her eyes fell on Hikaru, sprawled across the bed shirtless and sound asleep.

Double Crap.

She reached down to feel between her thighs, but all she had to do was shift to feel her skin constricted by what remained of of congealed fluids hastily wiped off.

Triple crap.

She was just about to pull the covers over her head and curl into a ball when she felt pair of arms wrap around her and pull her into a clumsy hug.

"M-morning, my sweet redheaded angel," Hikaru mumbled sleepily, pressing his lips into her temple.

"Hikaru, no!" Kaoru's kneejerk response was to swat and flail as if she'd been electrocuted, and he shrunk away a might reluctantly, pulling the covers over his chin.

"Buyer's remorse?" He flashed a crooked smile. "I guess I should've known… You didn't enjoy it very much last night, did you? I knew I pushed you too hard, I'm sorry."

"No, no, no, Hikaru's, that's not it -"

Although she had not wanted to think about it, Hikaru had put one of her bigger fears to rest - that the previous night had been a drunken incident between friends, and that he would beat her to it and write it off as such. But now that that was out of the way, there were bigger fish to fry.

"It's just that - you can't be in here." Her voice sank to a strangled whisper. "If we're caught, we'll be in so much trouble…"

"Trouble? What time is it?" Hikaru furrowed his brow and peered over her at the alarm clock on the bedside table. "Ten fifty eight -"

"Oh my Goooood." The desire to bury her face in her knees and never face the world again was back in a flash, and this time Kaoru succumbed. "Toroko's due in two minutes…"

"Two minutes?"

"Yeah, she always comes by to check on me at eleven."

"So? Pretend you're asleep -"

"No, it doesn't work that way - it seems she's got orders to actually come IN if I don't answer…" Burying her face in her knees was not helping. Kaoru could feel the airways of her lungs collapsing and her throat seizing up. Hikaru put a hand on her shoulder and rubbed it back and forth.

"Hey… Hey-y-y…" He whispered, trying to buy time as his mind ranged desperately for a way to reassure her. But informing her that Toroko was technically HER maid and that she could change the "orders" at any time would not have done much good - and in any case, it was too late for that anyway.

Kaoru's head snapped up as quickly as she'd put it down.

"Okay." She took a quick breath, fixing her eyes straight ahead. "You. Closet. Now."

"Aye-aye, milady!" Hikaru bounded up and out of bed, tossing off a mock salute.

"And, Jesus, put some pants on!"

She buried her face in her hands as he spun around to face her.

"Hey!" He chuckled. "It's not like it's anything you haven't seen before - or interacted with."

"Yeah, ok, fine." Kaoru kept her eyes pointedly covered. "But strictly speaking it was dark, and I wasn't looking down - so pants, PLEASE. And a shirt while you're at it."

"Oh, alright then, but just so you know you're missing out -"

"Miss Kaoru?" - There was a knock on the door, and Kaoru felt her stomach plummet to the basement.

"Just a second, Toroko…" - she called. She didn't know where her voice had come from - half-stranged and battered as it sounded - but she was certainly glad it did. Quick as lightning, she wrapped a sheet around herself and jumped out of bed. Hikaru had not managed to pull any discrete garments from the wad of clothing by the bed, so she gestured at him to use as much as he could grab as a loincloth, and bodily pushed him into the closet. She then shoved what was left of last night's party under the bed, threw open a dresser drawer and pulled out the first clean clothes she could find.

When Toroko came in, she found a slightly ashen-looking Kaoru stripping the sheets from the bed.

"Miss Kaoru, is everything alright?"

"Y-yes…"

"What happened here?" Kaoru saw the maid's eyebrows twitch upward just a hair as she cast a slow look over the bed.

"I got that-time-of-the-month early," Kaoru replied, avoiding the young woman's eyes as she pulled at the fitted sheet and the mattress pad below, which had not escaped the carnage.

"Oh, well, you didn't have to - I could've done that for you." Toroko's speech was slower than normal as if a program was lagging on a computer, but her cool demeanor was back, smacking - as usual - of freshly folded towels and one-time-use French soaps. She crossed the room, picked up the wicker laundry hamper, and held it out to Kaoru, who placed the armful of sheets inside it.

Toroko smiled.

"Is there anything else you'd like me to take?"

"No, that's alright."

"Anything else you need?"

Kaoru shook her head, a little more vigorously than she intended.

The maid nodded again and smiled, her cheeks plump as apples, and gave a small bow. The laundry basket was still in her arms, and she was holding it almost ceremoniously, a few inches away from her body. As the door closed behind her, Kaoru breathed a sigh, thanking the powers that be that Toroko had spared her from an exhaustive list of lady products.

…

Having ascertained that the coast was clear and gone to the bathroom to down a glass of water, Kaoru let Hikaru out of the closet. He was hugging the armful of clothes in much the same way to hide his middle, and wearing a look more sheepish than before.

"Uh… do we need to talk about anything?" he asked uncertainly as she turned away and headed to the bed, now free of sheets.

Despite what had happened, Kaoru still found herself too ashamed to look at a shirtless Hikaru in the light of day. She averted her eyes and masked her feelings with a matter-of-fact smile as she sat down and set about folding the clothes that were not part of Hikaru's loincloth.

"Well, there's not much to talk about, is there?" she replied. "We both know that what happened, we both know we weren't thinking straight, so we can either forget about it and move on, or… forget about it or move on."

"I… don't want to forget about it and move on."

Kaoru looked up with a start to find that Hikaru had come to kneel beside her, his nudity safely covered up by a T-shirt and boxers.

"I like you, Kaoru. THAT way."

Kaoru froze with the flask in her hand - empty of Johnnie Walker.

"It wasn't just the alcohol last night" He nodded at the flask. "I really do. I have for a while. And I want to be with you - that way. In fact, I never want to let you go."

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this can't be happening - Kaoru thought desperately, suddenly regretting that there was no whisky left. Because the truth - the terrible, uncomfortable, jagged truth - was that despite the awkward fumbling and her crippling insecurity, the previous night had made her heart sing in ways she never imagined. It was next to impossible to believe that anyone could want her THAT way, or that the boy who'd made her feel the way she did was her brother. But although she had been afraid to admit it, what happened had filled a need she had never been able to name. Somehow it made so, so much sense that it had to be Hikaru - sweet, funny, charismatic, a little insecure - and the only person whose company never made her feel lonely. It made her chest feel full, and the fullness threatened to overflow from her eyes.

"Hikaru, are you on crack?" - she swallowed - "I'm your sister."

"Doesn't matter. You're still a girl I like. And incest's not illegal. Obviously, as much as I wish I could, I wouldn't advocate shoving our relationship in everybody's face and saying, 'hello, I'm dating my biological sister and our sex life is AWEsome,' but to the people who know us I'm sure it'll be alright. Some people even find taboo relationships really hot, and you can't hate what you find intriguing."

Kaoru stared at her brother, and he looked back with a self-satisfied doggedness as if he thought his logic was nothing short of bulletproof.

"But" - Kaoru rallied - "You've only met me… what, less than two weeks ago?"

"That's plenty long enough to form an opinion."

His tone was just as dogged, but, miraculously, it didn't seem like he was trying to pressure her to give an answer. In fact, he looked like he was waiting patiently, watching her with slightly downcast eyes. Suddenly, she felt alone and very cold, even though he was only a few feet away. Her skin missed his arms around her, and his lips - oh, God…. She felt a blush rise to her cheeks as a thrill rushed from the pit of her stomach to the roots of her hair. She put down the flask.

"O… kay. I guess we can see how it goes," she said slowly.

Hikaru leapt up to his feet and pulled her with him, fast as a firecracker.

"Oh, goodie!" he cried, "I knew you'd come around, Kaoru!" He spun her around by the arms, but - uncoordinated and somewhat dizzy as they were from their hangovers - they collapsed quickly on the bed with Hikaru on top. "Gawd, I'm the happiest guy alive!" He laughed. "In two weeks, I gained not only a sister but a girlfriend, and they're both beeeee-autiful!"

A good minute passed before Kaoru was able to free herself from Hikaru's lips, which seemed to be on every part of her face at once.

"Uh, Hikaru?" she asked, chuckling in spite of herself even as her head began to pound from the change in position. "Is anything going to change at all now that I'm your… girlfriend?"

"No, it doesn't have to." He smiled. "At least not much. The only thing that's different is now we're on the same page, and we can do all the fun cliche relationship things and not feel weird. AND I can do this." He kissed her lips, and she narrowly prevented an all-out French, quickly remembering that the previous night's revelry left her mouth stinking worse than a homeless man's. She pulled herself up as Hikaru slumped down to hug her around the torso.

"Ok, fair enough." She ran her fingers through his hair. "Last question, though… You didn't just ask me to be your girlfriend so you could have a repeat performance, did you?"

"No, of course not." Hikaru let go and sat up, the laughter gone from his face. "What kind of guy do you think I am, anyway?"

"I don't know… Like I said, we only met two weeks ago." She smiled with her half her mouth and got up. "But just so you know," she added, "While I don't regret last night, I think we should take it down a notch. Zero to sixty isn't normally my scene."

"Re-e-e-ally?" - he chuckled, stretching himself out on the bed - "Cuz, knowing you, I would've thought - "

"OH-KAY, this discussion's over" - Kaoru flicked a sock at him and turned on her heel. Truly - she thought - it was probably too much to expect for someone as… atypical as her to lose her virginity like most people did: in a love hotel, or even a normal hotel, preferably with someone who wasn't related to her. But paradoxically, the part she found most mind-boggling - and too shocking even for her - was that her first kiss and her first time happened in the space of the same hour.

She had closed the door of her ensuite bathroom, stripped off her clothes, and was just about to jump in the shower - toothbrush in hand as per old habit - when she heard the door creak behind her.

"HIKARU!" She pulled the shower curtain shut with a violent jingle of hoops.

"I'm sorry, Kaoru," Hikaru said in a solemn voice from across the curtain. "I just wanted to apologize and say that however fast or slow you want to take things is fine with me."

"Uh, yeah…" Kaoru scoffed. "Says the man who barged in on me in the bathroom."

"Well, I'm sorry about that too, but I felt my message was too important to wait - I'll be going now."

"Going?" Kaoru poked her head around the curtain, and her lips spread into a mischievous grin. She hadn't known what hit her. But heck, if she had a boyfriend now… "Don't go," she said in a soft voice, turning on the shower. "I caught a bit of a glimpse before, and if I recall correctly, you still need to wash off your red wings."

…

After Hikaru stepped into the shower, it took all of a few minutes for the suds and the steam to have done their work, and for the twins to become entwined in each other's arms again, lips locked and hands ranging hungrily under the hot, stinging needles. Before long, Hikaru had Kaoru against the wall, and she had to beg him not to go inside her because she was still sore. Instead, she squeezed him between her thighs and the ridge of her pelvic bone, and as he began to move the tight, eager little tongues of warmth started to spread again, lapping up her belly and down her thighs. Before she knew it, the licks were resonating so hard it made her fingers dig into his back, and she kissed him so hard their teeth clacked together.


	10. Type B

When Yuzuha was twenty-three, she learned she would never have children. The day she found out, she came home, lay down in bed and wept for a week. But life went on, and when she got up she decided that her first order of business was to tell her fiance, and to say that if he did not want to marry her anymore she'd understand. But Yuzuke Hitachiin - the shy, unassuming heir to a textile fortune - was just as in love as the day he met her. He said it didn't matter, and that spring they tied the knot as planned.

A year into the marriage Yuzuke advanced a proposal. Yuzuha had always had good taste, and had been making her own clothes since high school - imaginative designs, too, and takes on runway pieces almost better than the originals. He, for his part, never had much interest in the family business, preferring to make 3-D worlds out of pixels. He did not even have to finish his thought before Yuzuha's eyes began to shine. Serendipitously, she came from a family of information technology moguls, and the two of them quickly made a pact. Her parents would take Yuzuke under their wing and help him achieve his dreams. She, on the other hand, had ideas of how to make Hitachiin Silks - a company whose pedigree spanned centuries - into something even bigger.

Ten years later, Hitachiin Silk Concerns had become Hitachiin Designs, and Yuzuke could not have been more proud of his wife as she spent days and nights making luxury kimono, dresses, and scarves that were quickly stealing Hermes' share of the market. Yuzuha had become both a style icon and a designer - the very image of the modern empress. She also seemed to have forgotten her grief over her infetility. But as she poured more and more of herself into the company, she had also begun to dread the day she would be forced to give her baby up to someone whom she had not raised from two feet tall like she did the fashion house, and who was not hers like Hitachiin Designs was. Because that was the only option, wasn't it? To someday "adopt" some promising protegee. For a long time, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind.

On a monthly basis, Yuzuha met her friends - women her age who did much less and were married to men like her husband. At one such meeting of ladies who lunched and pretended to do charitable work while at it, there was a visitor - a young American woman named Suzannah who worked for the JET program. Suzannah had pulled out pictures of her family to show, and one of the ladies had expressed amazement: Suzannah's sister looked as white as she did, but her "daughters" were Chinese. Suzannah explained that the children were adopted - and that helping orphans find new families was her job. But the statement was met with blank stares from every corner of the table.

Several failed attempts to explain the concept later - even a dictionary had been pulled out, but to no avail - one of Yuzuha's college roommates finally clapped her hands and exclaimed,

"Oh, I get it!"

Ten permed and lacquered heads turned to the woman at once.

"I have two cats," she explained smilingly, "Momiji is a pedigreed Birman I bought from a breeder, and Momoko is a stray I started feeding and ended up taking in. Suzannah's nieces are like Momo-chan!"

It took all the generations of fine breeding behind Yuzuha's shoulders to keep her face from expressing the indignation she felt. To compare children to pets - that she could perhaps expect: most of her friends were vain, superficial women; it came part and parcel with their status. But who was to say that worthy souls, and even worthy blood, could not fall upon hard times, and end up "in the system," waiting forever for parents who would not come? And how would Sadako-chan like it if HER precious Momiji ended up at the pound - or, for that matter, if her precious seven-year-old Ritsuko and five-year-old Akira were turned out of their house and became wards of the state if something happened?

Suzannah had used the sudden burst of understanding to make her pitch to the ladies. She explained that the Japanese government did not encourage adoption and turned a blind eye to the problem - believing, perhaps, that children were best off with their biological parents even when those parents could do nothing for them.

The ladies remained skeptical, and by the end it felt like even Suzannah looked like she was just doing her job. But when the luncheon came to a close, Yuzuha pulled her aside and demanded to know more.

…

Yuzuha had type B blood, and everyone who learned this was surprised. She had always been a dutiful, hard-working girl, and could not have been expected to make history. Even as an adult, she could have only been described as "old-school," and her designs were the same way - rooted in tradition almost to a fault, except for the one daring detail that would shine all the brighter for it. And so when Yuzuha did something new, she always ended up leading by example. After all, if Yuzuha Hitachiin did it, of course she could be forgiven. She did everything else so perfectly and so by the book that if she took up writing fanfiction, how bad could it be? It might even be worth emulating.

Yuzuha's B personality emerged only rarely, most often when she came up with the daring details that her otherwise demure ways made easy to swallow. She never knew how exactly her crazy ideas came about - they just did, out of recesses of her mind she did not know existed, or - as was the case with Suzannah - out of nowhere at all. But when Yuzuha found something that intrigued her, she REALLY got into it. When she met with Suzannah on her own, she asked to be taken to the worst-ranking orphanage the latter knew of - one that exemplified all the systemic ills. Such an orphanage, in Suzannah's estimation, happened to be in a coastal town called Sasebo in Nagasaki prefecture**, and one fine weekend the two women found their way down there.

(**This is a reference that will probably escape everyone but me, but Sasebo is the sister city of Albuquerque, NM. Those who watch Breaking Bad and keep reading might find this circumstance hilarious. Or not.)

Once there, she asked the incredulous staff - who had never had a visitor bearing a Hitachiin purse and wearing Manolo Blahnik sandals - to bring her all the B-type children they had. Still, they complied with the eccentric lady's request, and in ten minutes about twice as many children of various ages were hustled into the superintendent's office. The superintendent - who liked to toe the party line, but not when large amounts of potential gift-money walked through his door - had just about finished introducing Yuzuha and hinting heavily that to the winner of her affections would go unimaginable spoils, when a young nurse spoke up from the knot of staff gathered to observe the proceedings.

"But what about Carrot Top?"

"Carrot top?" - someone asked.

"Yes, Carrot Top in infirmary 3 - is he still there?"

"Oh," replied a colleague of hers, "I didn't think it'd be worth it to bring him in. He's on his way out."

"On his way… out?" Yuzuha slowly turned to the woman who had spoken last. She turned out to be a tall girl with thick black hair in a ponytail, full lips, and a handsome high-bridged nose. She was dressed in a nurse's uniform, and stood like one used to wielding authority despite her age.

"He's not doing very well," the tall girl said, meeting Yuzuha's eye. "He hadn't been since he got here."

"And you thought this was a reason not to bring him."

The girl faltered, but caught herself halfway.

"Well, I thought ma'am would prefer a nice, pink, happy baby - not someone to bond with only to have it all end relatively quickly."

Yuzuha took a step toward the woman, and two sets of high cheek bones might have locked in a deadly duel if her chin jutted up any quicker.

"I want to see this Carrot Top," she said.

…

The strong-featured nurse led Yuzuha through hallways that had seen better days, dodging children who ran from room to room playing a sad indoor version of kick-the-can or whiling away boredom in corners. Suzannah followed at Mrs. Hitachiin's elbow.

"From what I can gather," Suzannah was saying in English per Yuzuha's request as she flipped through a file, "Carrot Top's got failure to thrive - a lot of the little ones do, actually. They don't like to admit it - that it's a lack of attention and technically their fault that the kids don't want to eat, so they blame it on a bad background…"

Yuzuha could see Suzannah was trying her best to keep her voice free of inflection for the benefit of the woman whose back they followed.

"Just out of curiosity, what IS his background?" - she asked without breaking stride.

"Oh…" Suzannah paused in her flipping and pressed her lips. They passed by a window, and a sun-fleck caught a querulous look in the younger woman's eye. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"I do. I won't let it influence my decision, don't worry."

"Well," said the younger woman, "It looks like he was rescued from some bad circumstances. Both his parents were known to authorities only by nicknames and involved in the drug trade - and his mother killed his father by breaking a stolen ATM over his head. Or at least that's what is says here - I'm not entirely sure how one steals an ATM. Or tips it over someone's head." **

(**Breaking Bad reference. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? MWAHAHAHA. Sorry. We now return to your regularly scheduled fanfic…)

Once again, Yuzuha had to draw upon every reserve to keep her composure.

…

Carrot Top was eight months old, but looked like he was half that age. His face was tied in a raw, permanent knot from crying, and he looked like a shell of bones even under swaddling clothes. And a carrot-top he definitely was, though his hair was more of a dull-auburn. The strong-featured infirmary head picked him up and handed him to Yuzuha, motioning her to support the head.

Yuzuha looked at the child and her first thought was that he was actually a very pretty baby. Even though his bone-shell sent a painful twinge through the chest, and his skin was yellowish and pale, he had a cute ski-jump nose and beautiful tiger-eyes. Indeed, his eyes had a much wider crease than she was used to seeing, and quite apart from their uncommon color they looked very intelligent and determined, and made her wish he could speak so he could tell her about all the places he'd been and all the things he'd seen. She found herself wondering if he was part foreign - in any case, she would never be able to sell him as her and Yuzuke's biological child. But never mind, she thought - all the better. She rocked him against her chest, and slowly his whines turned to mewls.

When Yuzuha looked up, she saw that the infirmary head was not alone - a nurse assistant emerged from a side-room to join her overseer. This one was a very young girl with the reddish hair-streaks of a newly minted highschool graduate. Both women's mouths hung unabashedly open, and the younger one recovered first.

"I'm s-sorry," she stuttered with a sheepish half-bow and a quiver in her voice,"It's just that… He hasn't stopped fussing since he GOT here."

"Quick, bottle - now!" the Head barked without turning - to the extent that it was possible to bark orders in a low voice, as she seemed afraid to break the sudden silence. Her eyes stayed fixed on Carrot Top with as much incredulity as if he had sprouted two heads.

Before a minute had passed, Yuzuha found a baby bottle in her hand, and brought it tentatively to the child's mouth. He reached his hands up and flailed them, and with a soft coo his mouth closed around the nipple. Yuzuha noticed that his fingers were nearly translucent, and might have fit comfortably around one of hers.

"What's his real name?" she asked after a few moments, looking up at the head nurse when she felt comfortable enough to hold the child without worrying her hands would disobey her.

The woman suddenly looked uncharacteristically timorous, and glanced at her toes.

"Well, that's the thing, ma'am - we don't really know," she answered. "We really do just call him Ninjin*."

(*"carrot" in Japanese.)

"It's true." Susannah nodded, materializing back at Yuzuha's side, file in hand. "It says 'Ninjin.' He never had a proper birth certificate, it seems…"

"You named a CHILD 'Carrot'?!" Yuzuha's shot a look of acid at the head nurse, her nerves finally failing.

"They do that to a lot of the foundlings," Suzannah said quietly in English. "And his last name's apparently 'Unknown' " - she added in Japanese.

"Well, not anymore," Yuzuha declared stiffly. "Goodness me, I can't BELIEVE these people" - she turned to the baby and sniffed with a smile - "Can you?"

…

Once the adoption went through, Yuzuha took up doing much of her work from home so she could be with her little boy and feed him, as much as possible, with her own hands. Yuzuke watched his wife and fell in love with her more by the day. Although she got up in the middle of the night as often as the next mother, she seemed to have dropped ten years in a day, and was never not smiling. And what was more, seeing how happy the child made her stirred paternal feelings in him as well. Before long they had agreed to name the baby Hikaru, after the ray of sunshine he had brought into their life. With proper care, Hikaru caught up quickly with his peers in growth and development, and turned into the plump, happy baby that the head nurse was convinced Yuzuha had wanted.

For many months, Yuzuha took Hikaru with her everywhere. He even attended his first directors' meeting for Hitachiin Group before he was one year old. At the time, Yuzuha was still working from home, so that particular meeting was scheduled to take place in the Hitachiins' study on a Thursday evening. The executives were in full assembly when Yuzuha appeared, notebook in one hand and baby in the other. She had come in, nonchalant as ever, sat down at the head of the table, handed the notebook to her secretary, extracted a bottle from her pocket, and said, "Now then, let's get started." And when Hikaru finished his dinner and dropped off to sleep, they saw her place him in a basket at her foot made ready just for that purpose. The next morning, Yuzuha's literal balancing act between career and motherhood was on the tip of everybody's tongue in Tokyo's wealthiest households.

Fifteen years later, Yuzuha was sitting in the same room, at the head of the same table, and cutting open her correspondence with a souvenir letter-opener shaped like a dagger. Her husband turned away from the bay window and looked at her. She wore an olive-green morning robe with a brushed pink collar, and the sight of the silk against her neck made him feel just as he did twenty five years ago.

"You know" - she mused with a smile, her eyes fixed on the crease of the envelope as she sliced it open - "I can't tell you how happy I am that the twins are getting along. It's funny, but I've never seen Hikaru so passionate about anything. All I hear from him these days is Kaoru, Kaoru, Kaoru…"

"Yes, it seems that way, doesn't it?" Her husband came to stand behind her. "My only hope, for both their sakes, is that Hikaru isn't just obsessed with her because she's some new toy that looks just like him."

"I don't think that's the case. I've done some reading on this, and it makes perfect sense."

"Hah, where did YOU find time to do some reading?" Yuzuke chuckled, letting his face hover over her shoulder as he pretended to peer at the letters.

"When it comes to my children, I always have time," Yuzuha replied placidly, putting the letter aside and picking up another. "Twins are used to having someone next to them in the womb, and they feel strange if that presence is taken away. Honestly, it could explain Hikaru's restlessness over the years, and the fact that he hasn't been nearly as moody anymore now that Kaoru's been found…"

"Well, let's hope Kaoru ends up being a good for him, and helps him wise up a bit. It's about time, if you ask me" - Yuzuke smiled and bowed to press a kiss into his wife's neck, but they were interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Yes, come in," Yuzuha called.

The door opened to reveal Toroko, her usual smile - a subtle luxury item - playing on her lips. She had a basket in her hand and approached the table slowly as Yuzuha motioned her in.

"Yes, Toroko? What is it?" she asked.

The maid glanced at Yuzuke, and her eyes betrayed the tiniest bit of uncertainty. The man's hands were folded over the back of Yuzuha's chair, and his knuckle just brushed the curve of her shoulder.

"There's something I wanted to show you, ma'am, but I'd rather it be… just you," she said.

"Oh. Why is that?" Yuzuha put down the letter opener.

"It's a bit of a sensitive issue."

Yuzuha nodded at her husband, who acquiesced with a civil smile and withdrew. Once the women were alone, Toroko placed the basket on the table and gave it a push.

"It's Miss Kaoru's. I found her taking it off her bed this morning."

Yuzuha drew the basket toward her, extracted a crumpled sheet, and it did not take much turning over for her eyes to find the dark stain. Her fingers stopped abruptly, and she squinted, blinking visibly a few times. She tugged the sheet back and forth, inspecting the texture of another dry fluid that was not blood.

"She seemed really nervous," added the maid. "And then, about fifteen minutes later," she bit her lip, "I'm sorry to have to say this, but I happened to be coming up the stairs just down the hall, and I saw Mr. Hikaru come out of Miss Kaoru's room – with damp hair."

Yuzuha swallowed, raising her eyes.

"How did you… How did you know it was Hikaru?"

"I don't think Miss Kaoru would wear the same clothes her brother wore hiking the day before, ma'am."


	11. Good News and Bad News

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for Tara - a very special chapter for a very special birthday girl. Hope you have a great day!

"Yuzuke, where did we go wro-o-o-o-o-ng?!"

Yuzuha had dismissed the maid and was slumped over the table with her face clamped in her hands. The basket still stood before her, a silent witness to the proceedings.

"We didn't go wrong anywhere, Yuzuha."

It had been a long time since Yuzuha had needed her husband. Indeed, if for some reason they had chosen to get divorced before that day, she might have moved on just fine given the proper mourning period. But as she watched the door shut behind Toroko, she felt every bit the incompetent college girl once again, whose life had magically changed for the better the day she found a boyfriend to help with such challenging life-tasks as navigating Narita airport and talking to school administrators, and who held her hand when her otherwise carefully concealed B-type hot-headedness got the upper hand.

"Are we… bad parents?" Yuzuha looked up at her husband. Her eyes were not red, but they may as well have been, and her lip was doing something he had not seen it do in years - it quivered.

"No, we are not bad parents." Yuzuke pulled up a chair, fixing his eyes on her profile as she buried her face in her hands again. Good-good, at least she's not throwing things - he thought, recalling a fateful evening when they were 21 and she finished what he'd thought was a perfectly civil conversation with her mother, only to hurl the phone so hard against the wall it shattered both itself and the paneling. Goodness knew, HE certainly died a little inside when he heard the news about the twins, but right then his wife's sanity was his first priority.

"I'm just - I'm just at a loss," Yuzuha said to the table. "I guess this is what I get for being naive enough to hope that if you never talk about it, it'll never happen…"

"No, I don't think that's it - I really think this goes beyond The Talk…"

"Well, alright. Fine. But - what do you even do in such a situation? I mean, what would YOU do?"

"Well. My first thought would be to find an expert on birth defects and try to scare them out of it. I'd also institute a strict open-door policy and curfew with room-checks. But for the moment I think we should triage feelings. After all, we don't know what led to it. We don't want to assume things."

Yuzuha had straightened up and was looking at her husband, who by then had focused his eyes on something outside the window. She glanced back at the laundry basket with a sigh.

"You can talk to Kaoru," Yuzuke said, "And I can talk to Hikaru. That would probably be easiest."

"But I don't even know how to begin talking to a girl about something like this. I would think she needs her mother right now more than anything…"

"Well, her mother is unavailable, so you're the next best thing." Yuzuke reached out to his wife's neck and swept back some hair that had fallen from her bun. "For what it's worth, I think you're better suited to the job than you realize."

…

"Kaoru, please sit."

It was shortly after lunchtime, and Hikaru's father had spirited him away to play golf when Yuzuha had smiled at Kaoru and invited her to come finish their tea in her study, as she had a lot of work to do but wanted to talk anyway. Yuzuha had been her usual unruffled self as she said so - and even her necklace against her plain dress, the world's smallest dragon-horde of cut crystal, seemed to stress the fact that nothing was out of the ordinary. But when Kaoru obeyed and followed her, she still felt her legs turn to water.

The maid arranged the tea on Yuzuha's desk and vanished, and the woman motioned Kaoru, who still stood stiff as a soldier, to take a seat in the armchair across the way.

"Kaoru, you seem nervous. Don't worry - you're not in trouble," Yuzuha began. It seemed all her attempts to normalize the situation had been futile, as Kaoru's knees were visibly shaking under her skirt. "That said" - she added after a pause - "When certain things occur in my house, I tend to be made aware of them, so I know what happened between you and Hikaru last night."

"I - I'm really, really sorry, Mrs. Hitachiin…" Kaoru's voice quivered, and her shoulders slumped forward as if she was bracing to be beaten within an inch of her life with the nearest decorative bamboo rod.

Yuzuha sighed.

"Like I said, you're NOT in trouble. I just wanted to hear your side of it." She pushed a cup of tea toward Kaoru, who made no move to take it. "There's probably a lot going through your head right now - there always is when something like this happens, and that's perfectly normal. I just wanted to make sure you're okay. And if you're not, I care about you, so that's something I need to know."

"I'm okay."

Yuzuha stifled an exasperated sigh but rallied quickly, adjusting the gems on her chest. Teenagers were skittish sometimes, no bones about it. It was worse than stalking a baby deer.

"No, Kaoru," she said. "You're not okay - I can see it. And in makes sense. In the space of two weeks, you lost your parents, you left your home, you met a brother you never knew you had, and you were forced to confront your adoption in a whole new way. That's a lot for anyone to handle. And my concern" - she paused - "Is that you've taken a step in the heat of the moment hoping it would solve something, or that it would help you deal with something."

Kaoru remained silent. By now, she was using her hands to steady her knees, and if Yuzuha were to have seen a puddle growing beneath her, she would not have been surprised. Suddenly, she felt like her innards were being pulled down, and all she wanted to do was come around the desk and hug the girl, to hold her and call her daughter, and to melt that sad, put-upon little heart of hers. But instead she got up and walked to the bookshelf, pretending to look at the titles as she watched Kaoru from the corner of her eye. The girl was biting her lip, and was not blinking.

"Mrs. Hitachiin," she finally said, her collar-bones rising and falling between words. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but you're not my mother."

Yuzuha turned around and came back over, pulling up a chair. Kaoru was sitting just as stiffly, but now all her tension was concentrated on picking her cuticles, and her face looked like she had a stomach ache and was being kept away from the bathroom.

"No, you're right," Yuzuha said. "I'm NOT your mother. But that doesn't mean it's not my place to be concerned. I was fifteen too once" - She tried to catch Kaoru's eyes - "In fact, when I was fifteen, I got involved with one of my father's business associates. There were problems at home, I was going through a lot of things I couldn't understand, and I just wanted to feel loved. That's why I wanted to talk to you. Obviously, it's not the same exact situation, but I still want to understand."

Yuzuha waited, and about half a minute passed with the wall of books gazing down before Kaoru nodded.

"Okay."

"Okay" - Yuzuha allowed herself a small smile, and took Kaoru's teacup from the table, offering it to her again. "Let's start with Hikaru. Obviously, what's done is done, but have you talked about where the two of you stand at all?"

"Yes, we have."

Yuzuha turned her head just a bit and gave a smile - very controlled - to indicate interest.

"He asked me to be - Well, he admitted that his feelings were more than brotherly. And that he wanted to be… together in-that-way from now on."

"Was this before or after?"

"After."

"And how do you feel about him?"

Kaoru paused in picking her nails and looked up. Her eyes paused over Yuzuha's face and traveled to the tall grandfather clock in the corner, a complex system of counterweights moving behind a pane of glass as the pendulum swung.

"I don't know. I feel… different with him. Sometimes I feel like he's just a silly little boy. But sometimes I think that if he took the next step without me, I don't know what I'd do."

"Kaoru," said Yuzuha, taking a slow breath, "You do understand there might be problems with this going forward."

The least of which, she could not help thinking, was that Hikaru had never had a girlfriend of any kind before then - at least not that she knew of. Supposing, even, that it meant something, the way Kaoru straightened up and looked more brave as she pieced her feelings for Hikaru into words. Supposing, even, that Yuzuha would be right to trust their feelings to be as pure and well-intentioned as those of fifteen-year-olds could be. Still, a sibling was not someone you could part ways with if love went wrong. And all told, they really were only fifteen, an age when love was like russian roulette: you could get lucky and sail through to happily ever after, or you might think you are in love, and get the bullet.

"Yes, I understand," said Kaoru.

"All I ask you to consider is that you and Hikaru met - and developed feelings for each other - under some tough circumstances. Like soldiers in a war, who come to trust each other absolutely in a very short time. But things may change when everything settles down. Other considerations will come to light, and then it might not be so easy any more."

Yuzuha paused and looked at the girl, hoping she would not have to elaborate further. At any rate, Kaoru probably knew what she meant already, and she did not want to insult her.

"I understand that too, Mrs. Hitachiin," Kaoru said. She straightened her skirt over her knees. "But I think I can figure it out."

"Alright, Kaoru. I'll trust you on that one - but if anything comes up, my door is always open." Yuzuha took up the tea cup, which Kaoru had not touched, and placed it back on the tray. "Before I let you go, though, do you remember when your last time-of-the-month was?"

Kaoru had gotten up halfway, but plopped right back down like a heap of sticks.

"My time of the month?"

Yuzuha raised her eyebrows - not too far, she hoped, but just far enough. Kaoru's cheeks grew bright pink as if slapped, and she suddenly looked like she was apologizing with every part of her body for the mere fact of her existence.

"Well, Mrs. Hitachiin, I'm not sure how to say this, but… I've never had a time-of-the-month."

It was Yuzuha's turn to sink a little lower in her chair.

"Never? Not once?"

"No, never."

"Well, that's -" Yuzuha paused, noticing that Kaoru looked like she had been sliced with a machete - "Not entirely atypical. From what I know, it's perfectly possible to get your first period any time between ages 9 and 15."

"Well, I guess time's running out for me, isn't it?" Kaoru's mouth shifted into a broken smile. "I'll be 16 in two months."

"Have you ever talked to a doctor about it?"

Kaoru shook her head. "No, I never had much cause to go see a doctor, aside from school physicals. I've always been pretty healthy."

"Well," said Yuzuha, taking a sip of tea to buy herself a moment. "In that case, things might be a little more complicated - because you technically don't know you've had your first cycle until it's over. So maybe this is something we need to get checked out sooner rather than later. I'll see if my doctor is available today."

…

The fact that Yuzuha was not able to have children did not stop her from having a gynecologist on retainer, and this gynecologist's name was Dr. Mikuru Asahina**. She looked to be about 30, was impeccably dressed, and had hands like petals that Kaoru thought belonged on a magazine cover modeling watches and jewelry. Her peach-colored hair was long and hung forward, and seemed to be that of a much younger woman. And yet - much to Kaoru's chagrin - the first thing she noticed - indeed, could not help noticing - was that Dr. Asahina had one of the biggest bosoms she had ever seen. And even though said bosom was hidden under a demure, powder-blue button-up, it still added insult to injury. It took quite a bit of effort for Kaoru to feel like she was speaking to Dr. Asahina and not to her breasts.

(**I still solemnly swear this is not a crossover fic. I borrowed nothing from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya aside from Mikuru's name and appearance. Okay, and maybe parts of her demeanor. But she's not a time-traveler. She really is a doctor, scout's honor.)

Yuzuha and Dr. Asahina seemed to be on nearly first-name terms, and the latter nodded and listened carefully to the story without so much as an eyebrow twitch. More than that, although Dr. Asahina was more than twice her age, once Kaoru got comfortable enough to forget about the bosom she began to feel like she was talking to a friend - the shy, sweet type who liked butterflies, tea, and dressing up in victorian Lolita costumes. It did not even matter that her questions were laden with terminology as blunt and clinical as "vaginal," "oral," and "menstruation." Indeed, even the word "sex" was used liberally and unabashedly, and while on the lips of anyone else it might have made Kaoru squirm, in the end she found that as long as she avoided looking at Yuzuha, the questions did not feel so bad. In truth, it was almost a relief not to have to tiptoe around the matter, and Dr. Asahina was very good at her job - so good, in fact, that she did not seem like a doctor at all, but a waitress serving cakes as fluffy and soft as she was.

Thankfully, it also never came up who exactly Kaoru had sex with, and Yuzuha seemed to have decided to spare the news until it became clear it might be relevant. Dr. Asahina posed a few more questions, mostly about Kaoru's past, then ordered a blood draw, and finally asked if it would be alright if she performed a pelvic exam. And that was how, for the second time in twenty-four hours, Kaoru ended up on her back with her legs spread - this time on a cold pleather table, her feet in some incongruous stirrups, and a sheet draped mercifully over her middle.

"Don't worry - this shouldn't hurt," Dr. Asahina said in her dewy voice as she pulled on some latex gloves with a snap. "But if it does, let me know, and we can stop at any time."

And yet, Kaoru still ended up stifling a gasp and squeezing her eyes shut as the woman slid two fingers where Hikaru had been. If the previous night was not evidence enough that she was open for business, this certainly sealed the deal, and Kaoru found herself wishing she could run away like never before.

"Are you okay?" Dr. Asahina's other hand was on top of Kaoru's belly between her hips, and her hair smelled like a flowers.

Kaoru nodded.

"I'm just checking to see that everything's normal and healthy... How does that feel?"

"Uh - a little uncomfortable. But it doesn't hurt."

"Okay, that's normal. You use muscles you're not used to using the first time you have sex, and your insides get moved around in new ways. It should go away soon."

Kaoru nodded and tried to focus on counting the holes in the textured ceiling. The ceiling was made up of square tiles, but how many holes did each square have?

"So you said you've never had one of these checkups before - just sports physicals? What sport do you play?"

"Basketball."

"Oh, fun. How long have you been playing?"

Kaoru still felt very small, and desperately wished Hikaru could be there to hold her hand, as embarrassing and ladies-only a situation as this was.

"Since I was eight or so."

"So it seems like it's something you enjoy."

Dr. Asahina's hand was still applying firm pressure, but all Kaoru felt was a dull pulling. And the doctor's face still had a fresh, girlish smile, as if Kaoru was a friend's pretty child she admiring. Kaoru shifted her attention from the holes in the ceiling to the constellation of beauty marks in front of Dr. Asahina's ear.

"I do, I guess," Kaoru replied. A lock of Dr. Asahina's hair fell into Kaoru's line of vision. "When I get into the game, I feel like I can just be and forget everything else. That feels great. And all the girls are tall…" She gave a half-chuckle. "I feel like I belong."

"Have you always been pretty tall?"

A-and, there it was again. Kaoru stifled a wince as her eyes shot back to the ceiling.

"Yeah."

In fact, she had always been the tallest girl in her class - and taller than ninety percent of the boys. She was so tall that some girls' departments did not carry her size in shoes or clothing, and normal uniform skirts made her look borderline indecent. For a number of years, her height had been a source of crippling self-consciousness and a burgeoning scoliosis. But then middle school came around, and one day Kaoru decided that the best way to deal with insecurity was to meet it head-on, and to do the exact opposite of what it told her. That was when she began to dress in outlandish styles, wear boy-clothes, and act more and more on impulse. But that did not mean the insecurity WENT anywhere. All she managed to do was to chase it into a corner.

"Well, it seems to have worked out for you." Dr. Asahina smiled, and Kaoru felt the pressure release and the fingers slide out of her. She almost breathed a sigh - until a breeze on her privates took her right back to feeling like she'd been dragged to the gallows to be publicly "examined," and then to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

"Alright, that's done," Dr. Asahina said. "Thank you for being so patient, Kaoru. I know it's not easy the first time around."

She turned away and when Kaoru saw her again, she had a clear, duck-billed object in her hand whose purpose she did not want to divine.

"Now for the last part. I'm just going to use this to take a look at a structure called the cervix, which is at the bottom of your uterus. I'll also take a sample, and this shouldn't hurt either."

She sat down at a stool between Kaoru's legs and disappeared from view. Suddenly, Kaoru found herself missing the way the electric light slanted through Dr. Asahina's hair and melted into her skin, so soft and freshly powdered. As a piece of hard, jelly-covered plastic slid where her fingers had been, Kaoru made a small, pained noise. She tried hard to remember which dent in the ceiling she had left off on, and realized she wanted Hikaru back, to hold her and hug her, even more than before.

…

"Well, the good news is, we don't have to worry about pregnancy or STI's at the moment," said Dr. Asahina, her warm almond eyes scanning the printout in front of her. It was an hour and a half later**, and Kaoru was back to being dressed and balancing on the edge of a chair. Yuzuha sat beside her, knees and ankles together, and her face melted from polite Noh-mask to its usual, milk-and-honey self as Dr. Asahina pronounced the verdict.

(**Gratuitous note that the author feels professionally obligated to make: for the record, there is no way on God's green earth you'll get test results that quickly in a non-emergency setting on a weekend. But for the sake of moving the plot along let's just pretend super rich people have super high priority.)

"The other news," the doctor continued, "Is that I think I have an answer as to why you have not had your first period."

Kaoru sat up a little straighter.

"I've taken a look at your hormones, and while this is not a health problem per se, it looks like you have an condition that prevents you from converting one hormone - testosterone - into its more active form, DHT."

"Oh… O…kay..."

Testosterone? - thought Kaoru, beginning to feel sick. It seemed she had more than her share of that stuff anyway. She slumped her shoulders and brought them closer together.

"The thing is," Dr. Asahina continued, "DHT is really important during development. The female program for external genitalia is the default. If you've got a Y chromosome, DHT changes it to develop along male lines. And during puberty, DHT is what causes your voice to deepen and your muscles to get bigger. In your case, your testosterone is high - basically what it should be for a boy your age - while your DHT is nonexistent. Which led me to take order a test called a karyotype - that's your chromosomes, all in a line…"

She took a sheet of paper from her stack, and slid it toward Kaoru, who was growing paler by the second. The last two chromosomes in the series were a large and a small one, with the letters X and Y above.

"You were supposed to be a boy, Kaoru. But because of your DHT levels, it didn't work out. That means you have a vagina, but no uterus - in fact, I didn't find one on exam. And your ovaries are actually testes that never descended."

Kaoru began to hyperventilate.

Everything had fallen terribly, irreversibly into place, like a lock clanging shut. The reason she had never felt like a full-fledged girl, no matter how hard she tried, was because she wasn't one. She saw the faces of everyone she ever knew flash before her eyes, and they were all laughing at her. If before she feared that Yuzuha was going to beat her with a decorative bamboo rod, now she wished that someone would.

"Kaoru, here," said Dr. Asahina, her voice cutting through the fog that had begun to stop up the girl's eyes and ears. "Give me your hands."

Kaoru obeyed and held them out. Dr. Asahina took them in hers, but Kaoru could hardly feel them, except that they were soft and warm.

"I want you to breathe out. Just out, okay? I'll count to three, and you breathe out."

Kaoru tried her best, but for a few seconds it did not seem to be working. She felt like she was getting wrapped up a big, thick mattress, and - what do you know - someone WAS hitting her with what felt like a metal rod, though the mattress blunted the impact. She struggled to breathe out like the beautiful doctor said, but the only effect was to make the already thin scaffold of her shoulders buckle. Kaoru heard a strangled sob that she assumed to be hers, and her arms drooped and hung limply from Dr. Asahina's hands.

Yuzuha put a hand on Kaoru's shoulder and Kaoru let go, slumping back into the chair.

"Are you okay, Kaoru?" Dr. Asahina asked.

"Yeah… I am… But… I don't want to be a boy," Kaoru heard her voice coming from very far away.

The lines between the tiles on the floor were coming back into being, and Kaoru tried to fix her eyes on one of them and follow it. Her breaths were growing slower, but her entire neck felt brittle, and her back was hurting between the shoulders where it felt like someone had been hitting her during the panic attack.

"Well, strictly speaking, you are not a boy," she heard Dr. Asahina's voice float, mellow and sweet, from somewhere up above. "Your condition is better described as inter-sex - which means you have physical characteristics from both sexes."

"So I'm neither?"

"Well, no, that's not quite it…"

Dr. Asahina bit her lip and pretended to moisten it, her mind feverishly rewinding back to her training a decade ago. Admittedly, this was her first time dealing with someone with gender identity issues, and while someone, sometime, might have mentioned something about this, years of delivering babies and performing PAP smears had put her quite out of practice when it came to anything else.

"What you are biologically is not the be-all and end-all," she said tentatively. "Biological sex is one thing, but gender is a social contrast. There are actually lots of inter-sex people, though most of them tend to align themselves with one gender or the other. And there are lots of options to help with that. Let me ask you this - how have you felt about living as a girl so far?"

Kaoru was still looking at the floor, following the cracks between the tiles, and paused at a crossing.

"I guess… I guess I was okay with it." She paused. "I mean, I AM okay with it. I always felt kind of bad that I fell short of what a girl should be - I mean, I'm not small and cute, and I don't look all that feminine. I tried to blame it on maybe not being 100% Japanese, but I guess all I ever really felt was - lacking."

"I see. Well, sometimes people feel like they were born in the wrong body, or that their body does not reflect who they are. Have you felt like that at all?"

Kaoru pondered for a moment.

"No, I don't think so," she said. "I've felt frustrated with my body, but I'm pretty sure it's always suited who I was." Indeed, personality-wise she had always been willowy and a little brittle. "I never thought I would be better off as a boy."

Kaoru let her thoughts meander back to a time in seventh grade when she had purchased a boys' uniform blazer and chinos to wear to school. In truth, she had gotten the idea from reading a magazine about Yves Saint Laurent, and how he had introduced the smoking jacket for women. "The more ingrained our idea is that something is for men," Yves Saint Laurent was quoted in saying, "The sexier it looks on a woman." Kaoru, thirteen at the time, thought this would be her saving grace when the rest of the girls were gossiping about bras and periods, even as she only grew inexorably taller and remained as brick-like as ever. And when she had come home and tried on her new boys' blazer, she really did think she looked quite fetching in it - especially with her hair in a high ponytail like a tough biker girl. But incorporating the blazer permanently into her wardrobe proved an uphill battle. She would wear it on days when she felt particularly bad about her hips and shoulders, but the looks she got about half the time would send the ensemble straight back to the closet.

Dr. Asahina looked Kaoru up and down. The girl was still staring at the floor and cowering like a lanky, newly-born giraffe, and the doctor did her best to imagine what it might have been like for her. Even as she cowered, Kaoru looked graceful, her bones sharp angles pulled into an artful tent. Had she been groomed properly, she might have had it in her to be a model or an actress, and Mikuru found it hard to believe that things would end up altogether pear-shaped for her, whatever gender she chose to be.

"Well, you know, if that's the case and you are comfortable being a girl," she said, "I don't think this needs to change things much -"

"You don't think this this needs to change things?" Kaoru's head snapped up so quickly Dr. Asahina started. " But… But what if I - I mean, what if I met someone I'd want to… What am I supposed to say? 'Sorry, honey, I can't have children because I sort of look like a woman, but I'm actually a man?' How that even supposed to work - "

"Well, yes, that is a concern." Dr. Asahina glanced at Yuzuha, who seemed to have been concentrating solely on breathing the entire time, her Noh-mask back over her features. "But there are many women who cannot have children for a variety of reasons. This does not make them any less women."

Kaoru sighed. No less women. Alright. But that did not change the fact that all her life she had felt like a fraud, and now her identity as such had been signed, sealed, and delivered. A deficient girl who wasn't a boy only because that was the one thing she had not tried, had never even know how to think about - except for that silly blazer. It wasn't even about children, even though that was the first thing that came to mind. Yuzuha could not have children, that much was clear, but Kaoru was hard-pressed to believe she had a Y-chromosome. And truth be told, Kaoru wasn't sure if she even WANTED to have children. Considering the track record lately, she could not even be sure what tomorrow would bring. At any rate, if - IF - somehow things worked out and she ended up riding with Hikaru into the sunset, having biological children would be unadvisable anyway.

No, that was definitely not it. She looked down at her belly, where Dr. Asahina described her testicles as having lodged around an empty space where a uterus should have been. Dr. Asahina was wrong. Practically speaking, yes, Kaoru might go on living the way she had, and no one would be the wiser. But it wasn't true that the day's news had changed nothing. No one else had to know. Of course they didn't. But knowing, even if it was just her, still changed everything and made her want to vomit, rip her stomach open, and scoop out the testicles with her bare hands.

"How did I even get this?" she asked asked after a long silence.

"Well, it's a recessive condition," replied Dr. Asahina, her voice back to its chipper mellifluousness as if she were relieved to be speaking on strictly medical themes again. "You need two altered copies. You can either inherit both, or inherit one, and have a mutation change the other. In the second case, it would have to happen pretty soon after conception, though…"

She paused, looking more carefully at Kaoru's face. The girl had started to look sullen again, and had pulled away away from her arm-rest where Yuzuha's hand had come to hover over hers.

Yuzuha cleared her throat. "Um, so does this affect? - "

"Well, correct me if I'm wrong" - the doctor glanced back at Yuzuha - "But it seems Kaoru looks a LOT like her brother, doesn't she?" Dr. Asahina had not had much cause to see Hikaru in person, but Yuzuha had shown her plenty of pictures. Indeed, when she first met Kaoru she had to suppress a gasp at the resemblance.

"They've got the exact same face," Yuzuha affirmed.

"Yeah." Kaoru's lips curled into a dour smile. "He looks exactly like I would if I ate more protein and spent more time at the gym."

"Well, in that case, he probably just has the one gene and it doesn't affect him at all. But my thought is, it would be pretty atypical if you two were different sexes and had the exact same face," said Dr. Asahina. "Different sexes would make you fraternal, and you'd look only as similar as the average set of siblings. But given what we now know, you are probably identical twins. You both inherited one altered copy, and Kaoru's DNA took a second hit shortly after."

…

"How did it go?" Yuzuke asked with an almost too-deliberate air of nonchalance, shutting the french door that separated Yuzuha's office from her boudoir.

"Well, there's good news and bad news," said Yuzuha, looking up from her laptop. She had changed from her black dress into a silk wraparound house coat, and was half-lounging on a settee by the bed as she worked, her face grayer than before. "The good news is, Kaoru's probably not going to let Hikaru anywhere near her for a while. The bad news is -" She spun her screen around and pointed at the webpage.

"5-alpha-reductase deficiency?" - read Yuzuke.

"I took Kaoru to the gynecologist, and we got more news that we bargained for."

...

"Kaoru?" - Hikaru knocked on the door. "Are you in there? I'm back - and I've been wanting to spend some time with my special lady."

The fact that the door was closed had in itself been jarring - Kaoru generally kept it open at least a crack, and in the short time she had lived there Hikaru had gotten used to walking in with only half a knock as warning. But when he tried to turn the handle and found it locked, something in his chest did an uncomfortable flip.

"Not now, Hikaru." Kaoru's voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a well.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine."

"If everything's okay, why are you hiding?"

The door stood silent as the grave.

"Look, if it's mom, don't worry about it. I know she talked to you. Dad talked to me too. That's why he took me out golfing. But it's okay. Mom can be scary sometimes, but they're not mad at us. We'll have room checks and curfews and open-door policies from now on, and that sucks, but it'll be okay. We'll get through it -"

The door stared back at him, two matching keyholes like dumb mouths.

"Kaoru, come on. You gotta give me something. Talk to me. Please."

"I can't right now."

"You can't talk to me? Why not?"

"I just can't."

"Kaoru, come on. I'm your -" He paused. Brother? Boyfriend? He was her brother of barely two weeks and her boyfriend of only a few hours, so both seemed like rather weak arguments. "I care about you," he finally said, shifting his tone from slightly playful to more serious. "If something's going on, I want to be there for you, and I want to help."

Silence.

"Look, Hikaru," the door finally answered. "I really just want to be alone for a while."

Hikaru felt the rug get pulled out from under his feet. Alone? He had been gone no more than a few hours. What on earth could have happened? After they had been together the way they had, "alone"? "For a while"? Suddenly the world felt as black and lackluster as it had before he met her. Or rather, no - it felt as if someone had forced Kaoru at gunpoint onto a ship and then tied him to the pier, kicked him in the chest, and left him there to watch her float away. Was it true? Was it really over before it began? Or, worse yet, had she never wanted him in the first place and was only playing along, and he had been to naive to notice?

"Look, Kaoru," he said, taking a breath and furrowing his brow. "You can talk to me now, or three hours from now. But you know me. I'm a stubborn little devil. I am literally not going to move from this spot until I find out what's eating you."


	12. Dawn

"Hikaru, you can't stay here." Yuzuha tapped a stiletto-clad foot on the floor. "You need to go to your room."

Hikaru lay curled up in a ball under Kaoru's door, a pillow under his head and a surly expression on his face.

"No."

"No?"

"No."

Yuzuha hesitated. It had been literally years since Hikaru had talked back to her so unabashedly, and she had almost forgot how to respond in such a context. Were he still ten, she might have ended the conversation right then and there, taken him by the scruff of the collar, and bodily marched him back to his room. But it was to late for that now, and in any case she would not have been physically up to it if she tried.

"I'm not hurting anybody." He sat up, staring between his knees. "It's not like I'm going to break down Kaoru's door. And the hallway's wide enough, so I'm not creating a fire hazard."

Earlier that day, Yuzuha had been happy that his father had taken Hikaru away, because - truth be told - over lunch she could barely stand looking at him. She and Yuzuke had agreed that they first thing they would deal with was the fact that two children had had sex in their house, and leave the incest part of it for later. And in her talk with Kaoru, her first priority had been to make sure that she was alright - for, no matter what she said, Yuzuha was convinced that there was no way on God's green earth that Kaoru to have been competent to make such a decision. To that end, she had stuffed away her revulsion to be dealt with at a later date. After all - with Kaoru, given all she had been through, even that severe of a lapse in judgment might have been forgiven. But Hikaru was another matter entirely. Indeed, if anyone was to blame in all this, it was him, and she found herself growing steadily angrier with him as the day wore on. To think - first he broke the one rule of common decency that every society seemed to share. That alone, were she not his mother, would have been enough to make her never want to see him again. On top of that, he deflowered a poor, parentless girl without so much as a condom, and then asked her to be his "girlfriend" as if that somehow made it okay. And to make matters worse, she had ended up going along with it, poor thing, and now thought that the whole situation somehow had a chance. As if she did not have enough problems already.

And yet, Hikaru was not normally given to theatrics - at least not on this scale. She had almost wanted to roll her eyes and inform him that tomfoolery would not help his cause, but on second thought the sight of her son lying like a beaten dog under Kaoru's door confused her if nothing else, and she squatted down to get a better look at him.

"Hikaru. You seem upset," she said. "Let's talk."

"Darn right I'm upset," he muttered, looking past her.

"Tell me about it?"

She sat down next to him, delicately tucking her calves under her thighs as he pulled his knees up to his chin.

"I just don't understand," he said after a silence. "She told me I made her so happy, and that she'd never felt that way before. And now she won't even look at me…"

"Sounds like you feel pretty rejected." Yuzuha tried hard to keep her voice neutral.

"I mean, is it me? Did I do something wrong?"

Yuzuha sighed. The profound irony of the statement aside, he really did look more distressed than she had ever seen him. The sulking was nothing new, but despite her best efforts Hikaru had grown up a very self-impressed sort, and to see his lip shake as he spoke, desperate for answers as to how his actions affected someone else, was not something she had been expecting.

"No, Hikaru, you didn't," she replied. "In fact, I can tell you with a fair bit of certainty that it wasn't anything you did."

He looked up and turned to face her.

"How do you know?"

"Well, I actually happen to know what Kaoru's going through. It's something she found out today."

"What is it?"

"It's something pretty private. Something having to do with her, uh... health. It's not my place to share it. But I'm pretty sure it's -"

"Is she pregnant?"

"No, Hikaru, that'd one thing she definitely is not."

"Is it cancer?"

"No, it's not cancer."

"Mom, come on..."

"Like I said, it's something she needs to tell you herself. When she's ready."

Hikaru slumped back against the wall.

"I don't get it." He looked away from his mother again. "We've shared so much already. Her parents' death, my time in the hospital, the stuff with her family. What's so different about this?"

"Health can be a very sensitive topic," Yuzuha replied. "I'm sure she'll come around eventually. But you have to be patient. Patience is a very important part of a relationship" - she paused emphatically - "ANY relationship. Forcing her to trip over you if she decides to leave this room isn't going to help."

Hikaru sighed.

"I just wish I could make her feel better… I miss her so much already."

Yuzuha reached out and squeezed his hand.

"You can do this," she said. "We're all capable of more than we know, especially when it comes to the people we love."

...

As Hikaru lay in the silence of his room, the trees in the garden seemed to shine. He did not like crying. Crying, he was convinced, was for babies. And so he held out as long as he could - until a cold wetness began to pool where his nose met his forehead and overflowed onto the pillow. If only he had something to hold - he caught himself thinking - it might have been better. If he had something to hold, he might not be feeling quite so much like he'd been stabbed in the back and left for dead.

But no matter. Kaoru was still gone, as if she never existed. That voice behind the door could not have possibly been her. When he had had his arms around her, for the first time everything in life had felt alright. But now the world was as bare as ever, and home to just as many strangers as before.

He closed his eyes and rolled over on his back, trying to imagine a warm Kaoru beside him - cuddling with her arms around her knees and waiting with that winsome, softly mischievous expression for him to open his eyes. All he had to do was turn over, and she would be there. "Hello, Kaoru, my love," he'd say. "I knew you'd come back." And then he'd place his hand on the small of her back, and she would slide over to lie beside him.

Earlier that day, he and his dad had just gotten past the first hole when Yuzuke had looked at him with his ever-so-unpresumptuous smile and said, "You know, you're not very good at keeping secrets."

"Oh… what makes you say that?" Hikaru had looked up from rummaging through his gear. He felt a chill slide down his back - but only for a moment. He had been cheerfully exercising his avoidance skills to the limit, but he had known this was coming.

"You're very focused. And you're playing well, even though you're out of practice and there's nothing in it for you."

"I guess." Alright, alright, you got me. Now get it over with. It's not like I'm going to go streaking into the bushes.

"Look," said Yuzuke, propping his elbow on the driver. "Your mother and I know what happened with Kaoru. And here's the thing," he said as Hikaru paused midway in his movements, focusing pointedly on the contents of the bag. "You're not in trouble. At least not in the way you think you are. But just so you know, things are going to change. I'm pretty sure you know what you did was wrong, so I'm not going to lecture you. But doors will have to stay open from now on, we'll have the maids checking up ever half-hour, and there will be a 11 pm curfew with room checks. Oh, and if THAT sort of thing happens again, whether with Kaoru or anyone else, use a condom or don't do it at all. That part should be non-negotiable."

"Okay."

Well, that was pretty painless. That's dad for you, after all. Cuts right to the chase.

Hikaru picked out the right club and strolled over to his side.

"Well, good," Yuzuke said. "I'm glad we got that straightened out."

"I'm glad we did too."

They teed off again, and it wasn't until a while later that Yuzuke decided to revisit the conversation. They were walking down the endless stretch of green in search of a ball, and it was so quiet that even the the trees lining the fairway seemed to be empty of birds.

"So, now that the unpleasant part of my fatherly duties is out of the way," said Yuzuke, "May I venture to ask if what happened with Kaoru was a one-time thing, or is there something more to it? - and don't lie, now." He smiled. "I'll know."

"No, there was definitely something more to it." The ease with which the words came took Hikaru by surprise.

"Really. Is that how you both feel?"

"Yes." Hikaru paused. "At least I'm pretty sure. I told her how I felt and she said she felt the same."

"I see. And how DO you feel?"

The sky stood like a brilliant dome over their heads, and the outline of Mr. Fuji was a brilliant canvas. They could not see the city from where they were, and the air was cold for the time of year, but it only made Hikaru feel more alive, a silhouette delineated sharply from the surroundings.

"I care about her - a lot. I want to be everything to her, and I never want to think about anyone else."

They walked in silence for a few moments.

"You do realize it's going to be difficult for the two of you," Yuzuke said. "After all, your mom and I - we're obviously not going to treat you any differently, but other people - well, I probably don't need to tell you that they might be made very, very uncomfortable."

Indeed, the entire day Yuzuke had done his utmost not to show it, but he had been grappling with the fact just the same, and was only just starting to believe it. He still did not want to imagine it. But Hikaru was his son. The son he had bounced on his knee, and to whom he had read books, and whom he had taught everything from tips and tricks in Photoshop to the proper way to hold a steak knife. That fact alone was all that kept him going.

"Well, no one needs to know, do they?" said Hikaru, adjusting his newsboy cap.

"Well, you're right there." Yuzuke had to force himself to form the words, and focused his eyes on an observation booth on the horizon. "I suppose as far as what you do in the privacy of your home, no one does need to know. But women like to be able to tell their friends, my husband this, my boyfriend that. It might be fine for a man to remain a confirmed old bachelor, but women want white weddings, and rings, and babies." He paused, searching Hikaru's profile for a reaction. The boy turned slightly paler as the freckles across his cheekbones grew sharper. "Women who are not married by 25 are called Christmas cakes - do you know why?"

Hikaru shook his head, squinting at something in the grass.

"Because you can't sell a Christmas cake after December 25 without a significant discount," said Yuzuke. "And as unfair and somewhat dehumanizing a comparison as this might be" - he chuckled - "It's true - a relationship for a woman is a status symbol, and in the eyes of many, a measure of her worth. That's something you might want to think about - for Kaoru's sake."

At the time, Hikaru had bristled at the suggestion – especially when but like THAT - though he decided not to fight it. But he had definitely not thought about it that way. All he knew, up to that point, was that when it came to Kaoru, whenever he saw her he had an uncontrollable urge to hug her so tight she could barely breathe, and hiss, "NO! MINE!" at anyone who came near her. Indeed, the idea of anyone else with Kaoru - much less conducting her down the aisle - made him want to beat the living daylights out of the man in question with a two-by-four full of rusty nails. He was not so naive, of course, that he thought they could share their relationship with the world and see it met with nothing but love and understanding. Even he, when confronted with his out-of-nowhere desire, had not been able to ignore the little voice in his head that whispered, "but she's your SISTER." Indeed, at first he had felt duly disgusting, and wanted to smack himself every time he thought of her that way, or found his hand reaching out for hers. But even feeling disgusting - or better yet, the prospect of being seen as such - did not appear half bad when he thought of Kaoru's soft skin and her eyes, both gently mocking him like those of the proud girl that she was, and asking him, with a smile on her face, to come and hold her. That's it: just hold and lie in the grass and breathe in the smell of greenery and sun and sakura petals. He didn't just want to sleep with her - he wanted to hold her. And if that was the case, how bad could it be? After all, whether by the fault of his parents or not, he had grown up on a bit of pedestal, thinking of the world's hierarchy in terms of Yuzuha-and-Yuzuke, then him, and then the rest. As a result, he had always considered morality in relative, mostly consequentialist terms. And the fact that she was his sister made it even more exciting. He had always wanted a secret, a world all of his own. He simply had not realized that he did not just want it for himself - he wanted to share it with someone.

But he never stopped to think how Kaoru felt about it. What he would do if someone took Kaoru away he could imagine very well. But he had never asked himself what he would do if one day Kaoru decided she wanted someone else who could give her more.

In fact, he realized in the dark, maybe his dad's words were prophetic. Maybe Kaoru had come to her senses. After all - love? Between siblings? Love LIKE THAT? Not in this world, and - free spirit though she was - Kaoru was also the practical sort who would have realized this quickly. As for him, he really was a disgusting, sick motherfucker. There were some three billion women in the world, and he had to go and pick his sister to get the hots for, then get the poor thing drunk, and take her virginity. He was such a sick bastard he did not belong in polite society. He certainly did not deserve Kaoru. Indeed, he did not deserve anything.

...

It could had been worse, of course. She could have been set completely adrift after her parents passed. Or, she could have been in the car with them, and then her life might have been ripped from her body as metal twisted and scorched rubber stained the pavement.

But over the last few weeks, sit felt like she lost everything in rapid succession. First her parents. Then her home. Then her family. And then there was her hair, her virginity - and now her gender, too… Yuzuha had been right. It was too much for anyone to handle.

What do you become, she wondered, when you lose all you thought had defined you? Just a person whose silly heart keeps on beating because it doesn't know how to do anything else.

That morning, in the shower with Hikaru, she had had a hint of what it might have felt like to be a woman. He had finished between her thighs just as the warm pleasure came to resonate nearly head to toe, and it seemed like he had known she enjoyed herself, and kissed her deeply under the steaming streams, his hands laying claim hungrily to her body in a way he seemed too shy to have done the night before. It made her feel like never before - powerful would have been a good word for it - and as she stepped out of the shower - first - she let the towel hang looser around her, so he could catch a glimpse of where her back dipped into two buttons between her hips and curved to meet her backside.

But now, she stood under the same hot needles amid the same white tiles, and - as if the hours of weeping from before had not been enough - her chest began to shake as tears mixed with running water. The way he'd held her, the way he'd wanted her - it was all a lie. Everything was a lie. And everything was wrong - she thought, as she scraped the skin of her chest, abs, and thighs with a loofah, already angry from the scalding water. It hurt, but it did not matter. She would have rubbed it clean off if she could. The same skin, the same hard muscles and angular bones that Hikaru touched, that had been the bane of her existence from day one - she scraped it all, desperately wishing she had a bullwhip to take to it instead.

Ever since her parents passed, everything had been wrong. And getting more wrong by the second. But no - maybe she was the one who was wrong, and had been all along. After all, lusting after her own brother, and having testes in her abdomen - what did that make her? Nothing short of a freak. A creep. Disgusting. A lacking girl, an abortive boy - what was the doctor's term for it? "A boy, but it didn't work out?" How fitting. How FUCKING fitting. Heck, maybe it made sense that all these things were happening to her. These sorts of things never happened to normal people.

Indeed, maybe these things were the universe's way of having realized its mistake, and trying to wipe her off the face of earth. She rubbed harder as the streams pounded against her head. Well, in that case, rip the skin off, peel away the flesh, let it dissolve down the drain - none of it mattered. The concave stomach and the gangly legs with knobbly knees suddenly felt very far away, and as images of her and Hikaru pressed against the tiles in a consanguineous embrace came back, she wanted to vomit. Had they never slept together - indeed, had her sense and moral compass not been knocked off-kilter by all that had occurred, she may never have known. But they had, and she did, and this was her punishment.

Inconvenient though it was, she would have to tell him. He had been right. Now or three hours from now, she would have to face him eventually. And then -

She turned off the shower, stepped out of the booth, and wrapped a towel around herself, the threads stinging her skin. She then walked back to the room and pulled open a drawer - the same drawer that she had rummaged through the previous morning. Extracting a shirt and a pair of pants, she pulled them on by the gray sliver of dawn that lay across the carpet, and opened the door a crack. The hallway was dark and silent, and she made her way to the stairs with a soft, measured step.

Outside, the world had not yet woken. The stars were melting into the sky, but the streetlamps still bled a pale light onto the pavement, and sleep lay so thick over the streets that even the trees barely stirred. Kaoru walked quickly, past mansion gate after mansion gate, the slaps of her shoes echoing against the pavement. It was not until she emerged onto Platinum Street, Shirokanedai's famous shopping district, that she began to feel cold - but by then, the sky had begun to show a strip of pink, and she quickened her step, breaking into a run as her eyes scanned the boulevard.

…

Mori had applied for his driving permit the first day he was legally able to do so. It had never been any secret - Mori loved cars. Although he was not yet legally able to drive, he knew a great deal about them, and had designed his own custom Hummer, which he then got as a present from his parents. And ever since that day, he had enjoyed taking it on drives almost every morning around dawn, with Honey by his side. Since Honey's birthday was earlier, he had gotten his license as soon as he could as well, and always came as the "chaperone" - a requirement for anyone with merely a permit. Of course, the idea of Honey acting a chaperone was ludicrous, as he had had gotten his license for Mori's sake only, and had not driven a mile since. But he still liked to support Mori's hobby, and sitting in the front seat and watching the fingers of pink light creep over the rooftops was an uplifting way to start the day, especially when he got to share it in silence with his friend. That's how you knew you found someone special - he thought, letting his eyes meander over the windowpanes of a restaurant, the umbrellas on the sidewalk folded like bats sleeping upside down. When you could share a silence and have it feel perfectly comfortable - like an old, familiar blanket.

Honey began to feel himself getting carsick, and closed his eyes. It did not matter. Driving with Mori was still his favorite part of the morning. Nothing made him feel more safe than to being his friend's side, his face calm as the eye of the storm and his hands on the steering wheel, the purring, two-tonn shell of metal a fitting extension of his body.

Which is why it came as a rude shock when the seatbelt cut into Honey's chest as the car screeched to a halt with a bump.

"What the? -" Mori raised himself up in his seat to peer farther over the hood, then undid his seatbelt and leaped out of the car before Honey could blink.

When Honey had climbed out of the car, making heavy use of the stair step by the front passenger door, Mori was kneeling over a shape on the ground a few yards away, and seemed to be on the phone. Honey ran over to his side, and his heart nearly jumped out of his throat. The figure on the ground had a shock of red hair, and looked exactly like -

"Hika-chan?!" Honey let out a cry that was almost a sob.

Granted, for some reason "Hika-chan" was wearing an oversized T-shirt that read "Love Pink," along with what looked like loose yoga pants, but it was hardly a time to split hairs. Especially when the mat of red hair was quickly growing dark with blood, and the body's arm lay twisted at an odd angle.

"Wait, don't touch him," Mori commanded - to the extent that he ever assumed a commanding tone with Honey. "If he broke anything, that will make it worse. Let's let the professionals handle it."

Mori's face looked ashen even under his tan, and Honey had no choice but to obey, squatting by Hikaru's side and pressing a hand to his cheek.

"Hika-chan…" he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. His lip began to shake and he dug his fingers into Usa-chan in vain hope that it would help his friend hold on a little longer. "Please, please be alright, Hika-chan. None of us are gonna be alright without you…"

Mori finished his call and snapped his phone shut, resting a hand on Honey's shoulder. Honey looked up, cheeks wet with tears. He had not wanted to think about it, and a part of him still did not believe it, and yet -

"Takashi… How?" - his eyes pled.

"I don't know," Mori's voice's sounded as flattened as he looked, as if a car had hit him too and driven over him. "I should have braked faster. But he appeared out of nowhere."

Hikaru tried to roll his head just a little, but Mori's hand stopped it just short of moving far. He mumbled as his eyes shifted under half-closed lids, but there was no recognition in his face. Which, at the end of the day, was unsurprising. Hikaru did not look like he was in any shape to recognize anything.

…

The sound of the phone cut through Yuzuha's sleep like a knife. The phone in her room had a nice, loud ring -and she had purposefully programmed it that way in case of emergency. But there had never been any emergencies - at least not ones bad enough to warrant her secretary putting calls through, and not at at what felt like the middle of the night.

She pulled the eye-pillow off her face, rolled over, and fumbled for the receiver.

"Hello?" - she stifled a yawn.

"Hello," she heard a young man's voice, and it sounded like the speaker had never been faint of heart, but had either been hit over the head with a cast-iron skillet, or seen all four horsemen of the apocalypse. "I'm really sorry to bother you, Mrs. Hitachiin, but my name is Takashi Morinozuka. I believe you might know my parents, and I'm one of - " he paused - "your son's friends…"

"Yes, Takashi?" It was far too early in the morning to try and recall if she knew anyone named Morinozuka, but she decided to give him the benefit of a doubt.

"Well, I'm very sorry, but there's been an accident and I hit, er, your son with my car… He's on his way to the hospital, he's alive, and he's made noises and moved his hands and feet some. I just thought you'd want to hear it from me…"

Yuzuha sat up so violently the entire bed logged a 9 on the Richter scale and Yuzuke jumped up as well, taking hold of her by the shoulders.

Yuzuha lowered the receiver to her lap, turned fifty shades of green, and looked like she was about to vomit.

"Get Toroko. Now." She commanded to her husband without turning around. "Tell her to get Kaoru - use the key if you have to. And a car. We'll need a car."

Yuzuke launched himself out of bed without a word, and Yuzuha raised the phone to her ear again.

"Which hospital?" she asked, her voice that of one stabbed.

She closed her eyes and listen, then nodded. When the boy finished giving her the hospital name and address, she asked him to stay on the line even though neither had much to say anymore. They sat like that for several minutes until Yuzuke burst back into the room. Toroko was following on his heels, looking a might stricken even in the face of her usual impeccable professionalism.

"Uh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Hitachiin," she said as soon as she was in sight. "But Kaoru's not in her room… In fact, I can't find her anywhere."

Yuzuha looked up at the maid, her mind struggling to snap back to the here and now, and then the door flew open again and Hikaru appeared, wiping sleep from his eyes and his clothes from the previous night showing every sign of having been slept in.

"…and neither can Hikaru," added Toroko.

Yuzuha's face turned as grey as if she had seen a ghost. She swallowed and slowly pressed the receiver tighter to her ear.

"Takashi, are you still there?" she asked in a quivering voice. "I have… good news. The good news is, that wasn't Hikaru you hit. Hikaru's right here with me. In fact, you can even talk to him if you like…"


	13. Eight Letters

"Okay, someone REALLY needs to tell me what the hell is going on."

Hikaru was pacing the floor of the waiting room with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Hikaru, lower your voice," pleaded Yuzuha.

Yuzuha, Yuzuke, Honey, and Mori sat in a tense line, following him with their eyes. Yuzuha had not let go of her husband's arm the entire morning, and wore no makeup - testimony to a nervous breakdown whose magnitude might have warranted commission to the psych ward of the selfsame hospital.

"Why?!" He spun around. "My fucking sister was hit by a car and is in the hospital - why the hell should I?!"

"Because it won't help. It won't help you, it won't help any of us, and it definitely won't help Kaoru."

"Oh, don't talk to me about what will and won't help Kaoru!" Hikaru stopped in his tracks. "First - well, you know what happened. Then suddenly she comes down with some mysterious health problem and shuts herself up in her room. And the next thing we know she throws herself under a moving car -"

"We DON'T know that," snapped Yuzuha, her voice suddenly hollow. "She might have been jaywalking."

"Who the hell jaywalks at five o'clock in the morning?! - and from between parked cars? Mori - you said there wasn't a crosswalk anywhere in sight, right? And she did come from between parted cars, right?"

"Right." Mori nodded. Considering the circumstances, he was holding up well, even after Yuzuha had grilled him - without guile but continuously and persistently for an entire hour. And while Mori seemed to have dealt with the situation by turning into a robot devoted gear and circuit to reconstructing the scenario for whoever asked, a part of him appeared grateful for Honey clutching his forearm almost as tightly as he clasped Usa-chan.

Hikaru turned back to his mother with a vindictive look. "Where was she in such a hurry to get to, huh?!"

Yuzuha brought her hands to her temples.

"Yuzuha, don't be cruel," said Yuzuke. "Tell him."

"You know I can't do that. It's not my secret to tell. Not without Kaoru's permission."

"Well, Kaoru might not be able to give her permission for a while."

"Uh, excuse me?" Honey piped up in a small voice. "But are you sure you want us to be here for this? This seems like a private, family matter." He glanced at Mori, who looked like he agreed wholeheartedly that the two of them had landed in the middle of a drama worthy of Shakespeare himself.

"Yes, we do," Hikaru retorted before his parents could react. "I need at least SOMEONE on my side." He glared as hard as he dared at Yuzuha.

"Excuse me -"

They all looked up and saw a man in a white coat.

"Who here are the Hitachiins?"

Yuzuha, Yuzuke, and Hikaru raised their hands.

"Will you follow me? There's been a - development."

"No, Hikaru, you stay here," said Yuzuha as she rose, collecting what she could of her imperious demeanor. Evidently, the presence of a white coat helped.

"Oh, wonderful - more things you want to keep from me?" Hikaru glared at his mother - this time openly.

"No. You're a mess - Kaoru shouldn't see you like this, and you're in no shape to see her either. Stay with your friends." She glanced at Honey and Mori. "Get yourself together."

Hikaru collapsed into a chair by Mori's side, grumbling darkly. Yuzuha spoke and looked as if she was primed to slap him if he did not obey, so he had no choice but to watch his parents' backs disappear down the hallway. Cold needles chased hot ones down his arms and legs, and his head felt heavy. The three of them sat in silence for a moment.

"So. You have a sister," said Mori, after a respectable amount of time. "Explain?"

…

"Well, the good news is, except for a collapsed lung, a shallow cut to the scalp, some bruising, and some torn muscles and tendons in the leg, there is nothing at all wrong with her," the intern on duty said, having ascertained that Yuzuha and Yuzuke were indeed Kaoru's guardians, pending notification of her original family. He was a smiling, perfectly coiffed man in his mid-to-late twenties - and apparently fresh enough out of medical school to maintain a sunny disposition despite a daily onslaught of the most colorful traumas Tokyo had to offer.

Yuzuha stared at the doctor dully, apparently paying no heed to the derisive expression that was slowly forming on her face.

"Nothing at all wrong with her?" she repeated.

"It could have been a lot worse, ma'am," the doctor said, looking up from Kaoru's chart with the dutiful air of an honor-student. "Miss Kaoru's been very lucky. There are no broken bones, and there hasn't been much internal bleeding. The only thing is -" he paused, glancing down at the notes again - "And keep in mind, she is on a lot of pain meds right now. But she seems alert enough and she has been saying some… disturbing things. So we just wanted to make sure…"

"W-what kind of things?"

"Well," The doctor lowered his voice, even though he, Yuzuha, and Yuzuke were in a curtained-off portion of the ER reserved for speaking to families. "She's been saying that she is a failure, and cannot do anything right - not even end her own life."

Yuzuha raised her fist to her mouth with a soft gasp, and her lips spasmed, their corners curling violently upward.

"Has your… Has Miss Kaoru been in any emotional distress lately?"

…

"And… and I guess that's the gist of it. Don't tell anyone else yet, though, alright?" Hikaru said, looking first to Honey and then to Mori, to whom he had been recounting the story for the last fifteen minutes. They had at first interrupted every few seconds with questions, but as Hikaru talked on and filled them in on everything minus how he really felt and what happened between the sheets they fell silent, Honey's vociferous awe replaced by what Hikaru could only peg as incredulity.

"Alright, we won't tell." Honey nodded, looking down pensively at the top of Usa-chan's head. He was still clutching the bunny like a lifeline - and the same thing went for Mori's forearm, though the rest of the shota's body had relaxed quite a bit. "I just hope Kao-chan's going to be okay, so we can meet her for real. She seems really nice - and really brave. I can't imagine going through all that…"

Hikaru could not help but smile, inwardly. Honey had known Kaoru - or rather known of her - for all of an hour, and already he was appending "chan" to her name. Sometimes, a patented Honey-ism really was all you needed.

Mori nodded with a glance at Honey. "Either way, I'm never driving again," he said.

"Takashi, no!" Honey gasped, tightening his hold on his friend's sleeve.

"Yes. I'm putting the Hummer up for sale as soon as we get home."

Hikaru was about to respond, but a swell of emotion had gripped him by the throat. And then Yuzuha appeared, her face a good deal more grave than before.

"Boys." She nodded at Mori and Honey, her eye-movements jerky and seemingly set on avoiding Hikaru. "The doctors say Kaoru will be alright. So hopefully you'll be able to see her at some point soon, if you want." She paused, blinking at something invisible in front of her. "Hikaru, I need to speak to you."

Hikaru looked up at his mother.

"In fact, I think we might need a few minutes," she added.

"Okay. We'll be right here," said Honey with a smile, and hopped out of his chair. Having heard that Kaoru would be alright, a bit more of his anxiety seemed to have rolled off his back, and he tugged Mori, whose movements remained wooden, to the other end of the waiting room.

Once they were alone, Yuzuha motioned Hikaru to get up and to follow. They walked in silence, and Hikaru had lost count of the rolling gurneys, hurrying scrubbed-up staff, and mass-produced framed art they had passed when Yuzuha turned into the nook of another waiting room. This one was deserted except for a vending machine in the corner, the fluorescent lights above it somehow extra-bright for lack of windows.

"Kaoru's in there," she gestured with her eyes at a door at the opposite side of the hall, which was open a crack to reveal a curtain of the kind that divided rooms for added privacy. "But before you go in, I'm going to have to tell you something." She indicated a chair. "You might want to sit."

…

Although he had been a miffed that his mother had separated him from his friends in what felt like another power-play, in the end he realized she had been very astute in making him sit. And considering the state he was in, he quickly grew thankful that Honey and Mori were not there to see him.

"This… This is bullshit," he had stammered when Yuzuha first finished explaining.

And Yuzuha had made a concerted, visibly indulgent effort to keep a straight face as she insisted that no, it was not, and that she could only wish it were.

She then watched as he spent what seemed like ages running his eyes over the article on her tablet - until he finally snapped at her to stop staring, throwing a few more choice phrases into the bargain. Given the circumstances, Yuzuha seemed determined not to fight, and simply asked if he wanted to be alone. He said yes, and she had walked away, and ever since then alone was what he had been, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, the tablet on the floor where he had dropped it. The last he could remember was the outline of his mother's hand tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she disappeared into Kaoru's room.

At first, he could not think. He did not know what to think.

Kaoru, a boy? But… But… It was unsettling as hell, and he certainly could not blame Kaoru for what she did now that he knew. Were he in her shoes, he might have done much worse. Heck, even from where he stood he was not sure what exactly was keeping him together. And yet… In retrospect, there were things - small things - that were about as prophetic as a gong in the face. The way her voice did not match her long hair when he first saw her. And the the way they looked so alike that his only option was to stop thinking about it lest he went cracked and took up believing in the supernatural as the only explanation. "Hitachiin, are you sure that's a sister?" - his neighbor in the hospital had tried to be funny. Well, it was funny alright… Bloody hilarious, in fact, the way even the most decisive, most unambiguous piece of evidence had been a red herring.

And, supposing it were true, where would they go from here? The way he had held her, the way he had been inside - the way she had sighed and let her body go soft against his, was it all gone? Was it all a lie? He had never thought of himself as gay, or even bi, and a part him still did not want to go there. Of course, another part wondered if it even mattered, given the state of things "down there" with Kaoru. And yet, no - it did matter, it only because Kaoru might be the one who would want to change. He did not know what he himself might have done in such a case, but what if Kaoru ended up deciding she wanted to be more like a man, given that she technically was one?

He hated to admit it, but now that he thought about it, the things that had drawn him most to Kaoru were the subtle little feminine things - made more lovely still by her otherwise androgynous - nay, sexless - demeanor. The way she automatically pulled back a little and dropped her eyes when touched, even as she stood tall and straight so as not to be knocked off balance. The way she liked to toy with wisps of her hair, even though she no longer had a long, luxurious mane. The way her voice fell low and soft when asked about herself even though she was more than capable of looking people in the eye and giving it to them straight. The way she had looked so translucent and brave in her black kimono. The way she had cocked her head this way and that, tentatively at first and then with a touch of shoddily pasted-on pride, as she appraised her new haircut in the mirror. How kind she had looked when she had told him to get up, and that he wasn't an idiot - even Yuzuha, at her most Audrey-Hebpurn indulgent, could not have held a candle to her. The night she had been drunk, and kept skipping ahead and glancing over her shoulder - the only time he had seen a hint of flirtatious Daphne in her eyes, who both wanted to be followed and didn't - but mostly wanted to prank her admirer by turning into a tree. The way she had been, with her peachy warm skin, when she had first given him first her hand, then her hair, and then her self - that indescribable something that marked her as his without a single spoken word.

The truth was, he was afraid, though mostly of himself. Kaoru was alive and would be alright, if Yuzuha was to be believed - that much had eased his mind. But when the dust settled, they might not be the same people anymore, and he might end up being the man whose word was only good until morning. With anyone else, he might not have minded. But Kaoru was the one person he could not bear to lie to or to disappoint.

"Hikaru? Are you doing okay?" He heard his mother's voice above him.

He raised his head and saw the vending machine in its pool of light, cold and bright like a some cosmic convection oven. Yuzuha had sat down by his side and placed a hand on the arm-rest of his chair. She had gathered herself a little more since the last time he had seen her, and was almost back to her warm, slightly pillowy self, complete with a fresh set of sticks in her hair.

He nodded.

"What's on your mind?"

"I… I don't know." He said after a moment. "I guess I'm just not sure what's going to happen now."

"Well, nothing needs to happen right away. For one thing, I wouldn't even recommend letting her know that you know just yet."

"Yeah. Uh-huh. Right." Hikaru chuckled ruefully.

"Which, granted, might be a challenge," Yuzuha continued. "But you wanted to know, and clearly Kaoru's having a hard time with it, just like you are. In fact, it might be a while before she's ready to talk at all, so you probably have a little bit of time to get used to the idea. But that doesn't mean you can't try and be there for her. In other ways."

Hikaru nodded, drawing a long sigh. The vending machine, its bright rows of offerings stared back at him, its bottom row of buttons a long grin.

"Do you want to go see her? She's awake, and she wants to see you."

Hikaru paused mid-breath. "She - she does?"

"Yes."

Hikaru turned and looked at his mother.

"How… is she?"

"Same as before. But I think you should go and see for yourself."

Hikaru looked at his hands. Kaoru. Wanted to see him. It immediately made him so disgusted with himself it turned his stomach. Here he was, rehashing things and analyzing what exactly had tickled his fancy, when Kaoru - boy or girl, it didn't matter - was a door away and needed him.

He got up, picked up Yuzuha's tablet from the floor and handed it back to her. She smiled, the way she was wont to do, with just the corners of her mouth, and for a second he thought he saw a a dollop of smile dilute her coffee-brown eyes.

…

Hikaru walked into the room and stepped around the curtain, and as soon as he did a wave of guilt ten miles high swept him off his feet. Someone had tried to wrap Kaoru in a blanket, but there was still a very visible tube coming out of the side of her chest, the blood around it only partially wiped away. There was also an IV taped to her arm, and two tubes up her nose. Half of her hair was swept apart to reveal the steel claws of stitches. And an entire arm lay exposed and was turning violent purple where the skin had not been scraped off by what he could only guess was the road.

Kaoru's eyes had been closed when he walked in, but they opened as his shadow fell on the bed.

He had not thought about it until then, but if he had not done what he did - if he had only thought with his head and not with something else - she might not have found out, at least not for a while. And she might have been happy and secure in who she was, instead of seeking her fate under the wheels of a moving car.

"Kaoru - I…"

He took a step closer. Her eyes were sad in a way that made the dull, heavy light of the room wander into them and get lost. But more than that they were almost apologetic, as if he had caught at less than her best and embarrassed her.

…Love you.

I love you. And I'm an irredeemable, irredeemable ass. And no matter what we are to each other from now on - no matter who you are and who you choose to be, I will spend every day of my life working to change my idiot ways. Because I love you and love means it's not about me anymore.

He came over to her side and took her hand. It was cool and limp and smaller than he remembered. He fell to his knees - or would have, but was stopped halfway by the sideboard of the bed.

He could not say what he thought, no. If he did right then, she might think it was only because she had a tube in her chest, and a moment's emotion was making him say things he did not mean.

And by then, he could not have said very much anyway. The tears had come all on their own, and it took all he had to simply squeeze her hand and keep a semblance of a straight face as she watched him from behind her tube-mask. Her expression had not changed, and for a moment he wondered if she had perhaps been paralyzed. But then she shifted her head, and he felt her fingers move and squeeze, weakly, against his.

"Kaoru," he managed finally strain the words through his throat. Suddenly, he felt so sad, it was enough to engulf the world. "How… how could you sell yourself short like this?"

Kaoru slowly raised her eyebrows. "Huh?…" She did not seem to have much strength to talk - though it may have been the tubes.

"You're so… You're so… Wonderful…" He all but cringed at the impotence of the word. "You've… got so much to give the world. I… I'm sorry… I didn't do enough to show you that…"

Kaoru wrinkled her forehead, and lips spread into a sad smile.

"You're… biased."

"No, Kaoru…" He gripped her hand tighter to maintain some control over the new tsunami of tears that was brewing in his throat. "I'm not… I know I'm not. Hell…" He paused, squeezing his eyes shut as tears gathered in the corners, the lids stinging so violently it was getting difficult to breathe. "If you got a heartless devil like me to care…"

Kaoru stared back dispassionately, but the tears were coming freely by then, mixed together with sobs that shook him from head to toe. He could hardly see her.

I love you, I love you, I love you - he wanted to shout. And anyone who wants to separate us will have to chop off my hand. They could hack me into a thousand pieces, and I still won't stop loving you, or stop trying to make you see yourself as you truly are.

"Hika - Hikaru, you're… hurting me…"

Hikaru let go a loud sob and opened his eyes. Sure enough, had been cinching Kaoru's hand so tightly her fingers had turned red and the ends of her lips were twitching.

"Oh, fuck…"

Another sob shook his chest, and before he knew what he was doing, he had swept the covers aside - thankfully the awful chest tube and the machines were on the other side - and his arms and legs were around her, and he had pulled the blanket almost up to their chins. Kaoru let out a small, surprised squeak, just like she had THEN, but did not move, and, truthfully, he had barely heard it. He dug his fingers and face into her flesh, still so warm and soft and solid in spite of it all, and wanted to weep like a baby. But something kept him back, and instead he just lay, his breaths ragged, feeling her heart beat, the echo of a machine answering with slight delay. He breathed in her scent - the smell of girls' bedrooms and fresh showers - and let it take him away. It was a scent he would have picked out anywhere - on a busy train or in a crowded coat check room - on a street in the rain, or amid the sickly-sweet smell of antiseptic and industrially laundered sheets.

"Kaoru… Kaoru…" He repeated.

He did not know how much time had passed, when the abandon to which he had given himself up was abruptly cut short.

"HIKARU, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?! THIS IS A HOSPITAL!"

The voice had been preceded by the pattering clack of stilettos, but by the time he had heard it, it was too late.

When he poked his head out from under the covers, and sure enough, Yuzuha was standing across the room looking more like a kettle ready to boil over than he had ever seen her.

"I am going to close my eyes and count to three," she said, enunciating every word with the deadly precision of a diesel hammer, "At the end of which time, you will be on the other side of the room, and more grounded than you have ever been in your life."


	14. Straight On Till Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it seems there's been some controversy as to whether Kaoru would have been committed to a psych ward on a mandatory basis after her suicide attempt. One commenter - I don't remember who because the comment got deleted with the chapter - pointed out that in Japan suicide is not considered a sign of psychosis. And based on [this](http://little-details.livejournal.com/3377572.html?thread=61258660#t61258660) very informative comment, it seems the answer is "it can be," especially where a child is concerned. Unlike in the U.S., there are no rigid guidelines, and whether or not someone is committed depends on the physician's judgment. Either way, since I don't want to rewrite the chapter again to include a psych ward, I'll just make sure Kaoru gets the psychiatric follow-up she needs.

She's made a right mess of things - that much Kaoru had come to appreciate all too well in the next few days. What has she been THINKING, with that half-baked suicide attempt? But then again, who would have thought that killing one's self was so thumpingly complicated? And if she could not be sure what she had been thinking before, and did not know what she had meant or even wanted, she certainly did now. She wanted to kill herself about ten times over.

The first few hours passed in the dark of morphine. But even there, she could not avoid the facts. Yuzuha, when Kaoru came to, looked like she had gone off the rails at about 500 miles per hour. Uncle Kenji had dropped everything and flown halfway across the country for the second time in two weeks. She would, without a doubt, be missing the beginning of school - which meant she would be all the more an object of curiosity when she got there - if she ever got there at all. And she would start off class on anything but the right foot, when for the first time in her life she had wanted to try - if only out of deference for Yuzuha. And Hikaru had wept like a child and climbed into her bed, only to have Yuzuha catch then them and yell for what felt like an hour. From what Kaoru could gather, Yuzuha ended up taking away Hikaru's credit card, and froze his expense accounts and trust fund. And while Kaoru herself had been shocked, she could not exactly blame him: anyone would have lost their mind having seen what he had.

More than that, Hikaru was no longer allowed to visit her alone. He had to be accompanied by one or more of his parents. And since both were busy and school had begun, their time together was always short, and they never got to talk - not really. Which might have been just as well. After all, if they could talk freely, he probably would have asked her why she had done it. And if there was one blessing that came with being in the middle of an embarrassing hubbub, struggling to breathe and not being able to move without wincing, it was that she now had a far more concrete reason to despise herself.

…

"So, how have things been, Kaoru?"

"What do you mean," Kaoru chuckled ruefully, focusing on the several silver rings on the young woman's fingers. She could not be sure how many days had passed, and in that time her leg had either gotten better, or she got used to the pain. She had also seen any number of doctors, though she could not remember this one. In fact, except for her rings, there was nothing remarkable about the woman, and she seemed to fade into the walls.

"Well, it seems you came in to the ER after an accident two days ago. Can you tell me a little more about what led up to it?"

"You mean, how did I end up under the wheels of a moving car?" Kaoru smiled lopsidedly. "Well, I had sex for the first time. With... with a boy. And my mo - well, no, she's not my mother. My mother and father got killed two weeks ago, so she's my guardian now I guess. She found out and took me to the doctor, where we discovered that - what do you know - I'm not a girl; I'm actually a guy. With an X and a Y chromosome and everything." She shrugged. "I guess that's when I lost it, and decided to do what I did. But I messed up, so here I am."

The young doctor lowered her clipboard and adjusted her glasses over the bridge of her nose. Her nails, Kaoru noticed, were a chic shade of grey to match her outfit.

"Well," she said, "It certainly seems like you've got a lot on your plate, Kaoru."

…

In the minutes and hours when she was alone, Kaoru stared at the stucco ceiling and thought about Hikaru. She still did not want to talk to him, not really, but she liked to summon his image. It gave her the most absurd feeling. Somehow, whenever she was around him her danger sense would pack its bags and ship off for Tahiti. Never mind the fact that with him she had had her first taste of sex and alcohol, and that his complete inability to think ahead cost her her hair and formed a rift in her family. Arguably, even her current predicament could be traced back to him. And yet, something inside rebelled and refused to angry. It never crossed her mind that he could have been bad. Rather, she found herself... missing him, as if she were a child and he were her blanket.

She tried to argue with herself. Who was he, after all? Nobody. Just someone she barely knew - someone she had met two weeks ago. Brother? No, hardly. So what if he shared her genes? Boyfriend? Don't make me laugh. What made him so special, anyway? Silly boys like him were a dime a dozen. Was it his world, which was so different from hers? His money? His class? None of that was unique either. And yet, it all blew summarily away when she remembered his arms around her and the feeling of of being pulled up and up, like a happy red balloon - nay, a zeppelin - bounding through a clear blue sky.

On the fourth day, Kaoru was well enough to walk a few steps here and there in a cast and a plastic boot, but by then she did not want to do anything but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. Nights, especially, were the worst. At night, the tears came like clockwork. It was a good night if she managed to cry herself to sleep before the lights in the building opposite came on and the night crews got started on their cleaning.

...

One night, Kaoru lay awake, curled around her pillow and howling for Mommy, Daddy, and Hikaru for all she was worth when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Um, I'm really, really sorry, but could you please… uh… keep it down a bit?" She heard a small voice. "I can hear you all the way in the next room. I'm a really light sleeper, I'm sorry…"

Kaoru looked up and saw a girl standing above her. Once again, perfectly average - so average she might have been born of the drab half-dawn itself. Her arm was in a sling, she wore pajamas with a pattern of cherries, and had hair that shone with a soft luster. Kaoru drew a long sniff and shivered, hugging her pillow tighter, but her words had scattered like marbles.

Even in the darkness, the girl seemed to have noticed that her Kaoru's cheeks were blotchy, and lowered herself onto the pleather-and-metal skeleton of a chair.

"Hey. What's wrong? I'm sorry - I was rude, wasn't I? I didn't mean to be."

"No, it's okay."

"What's your name?"

"Kaoru."

"Mine's Ame - like the 'ame' that goes pitter-patter on your roof." She eyed Kaoru quizzically. "But seriously - are you okay? Do you wanna talk?"

"N-no, I'm fine. I'm sorry I woke you up."

"That's okay." Ame stifled a yawn into her fist, scrunching up her nose like a cat bracing for a sneeze. Kaoru noticed she had a very chirpy voice, and late - or rather early - though it was, once the yawn was out of the way she seemed almost chipper. "If it wasn't you, it would've been something else," she said. "Some nights they turn on the pipes, and then it's like there's a Jamaican drum band living in the wall." The girl sniffed a laugh. "But really. Since I AM awake and they'll come to draw blood soon anyway, we might as well talk. I can tell you why I'm here. I fell down some stairs. I don't remember how it happened, and I was in a coma for three days. My boyfriend, poor thing, kept watch and slept in a sleeping bag by my bed the whole time."

Kaoru's grip on her pillow slackened and she must have grown sad, because the corners of Ame's smile sagged in an instant.

"Oh… Oh, I'm sorry. Are you crying because of boy troubles? Or – or perhaps girl troubles?" – she added hastily, as if suddenly noticing that there was nothing about Kaoru's look to hint unambiguously at a gender.

Kaoru heaved a sigh and straightened up. By the time she made eye contact again, the improbable Ame was watching her fixedly, her fingers folded into an artful support for her chin. It did not take Kaoru long to conclude that retreating would be futile.

"Boy troubles, yes," she said.

"Does he not love you? Has he been a bad man? Cuz honey, if he's been a bad man -"

"No, it's not that."

"Is it that you can't be together?"

"Something like that."

…

"Hikaru, wake up." Tamaki snapped his fingers in front of the younger boy's face.

"Oh, sorry."

It was the first week of school, and Kyouya had called a meeting to get a rough idea of everyone's wishes for the upcoming semester. The boys were seated in a circle, and Hikaru had been staring at his hands, having barely touched his Turkish brew.

"Is everything okay? You look like you've seen a ghost." Tamaki's voice had been a bit miffed, but the note of annoyance drained away as soon as Hikaru looked up.

"Yeah. Everything's fine."

"No, it's not. I can see that it's not. Come on, spill - what happened?"

"Nothing happened. I just…"

Hikaru's eyes ranged fruitlessly for Mori and Honey, but only ran aground Tamaki, whose face had materialized to block the lion's share of his vision.

"I… I have a sister."

"A sister?" Tamaki's mouth fell open, delicately, in surprise. "But... that's supposed to be exciting, isn't it? Did your mom have a baby?"

"No. It's actually a... a twin sister. We were separated at birth."

"Well, gee, that's doubly exciting!" The Host Club King leaped up, slapping his thigh and clapping Hikaru's shoulder so hard he almost buckled. "Tell me everything."

Hikaru swallowed, finally catching the eye of Honey, who pressed his lips just enough to show a dimple before exchanging surreptitious glances with Mori. Kyouya, his chair angled, was observing the proceedings with a catlike fixedness.

"Well, we found each other over break," he began. "She's been living right here in town with another family the whole time. Except her family was killed in a car crash two weeks ago, and I got hurt in the same accident as well. That's how we met, and how she came to live with my parents and I."

"WOW! That's amazing! So where is she now?"

"Well, she was supposed to be here at school with me this week, but..."

"But what?"

"She's in the hospital."

"The hospital? Is she okay?"

"No, she's... She's really sad."

"Sad?"

"She... tried to commit suicide."

"She... what?"

"She's okay now, but yeah. You heard right."

"Well, gee, then what are you doing here? You should go be with her. Make her happy."

"I wish." Hikaru's voice had been growing more laced with tears as the conversation wore on. "But my parents forced me go to school, and it's the psych ward. You can't just come and go whenever. You have to wait until visiting hours, which aren't until 4. anyway.."

"Well, it's 3:15, if we leave now we can get there in time. Come on, I'll take you myself. In fact, I want to meet her too..." The king had sunk, by degrees, back into his seat over the course of the repartee, but had jumped up again - unable, as always, to contain himself for long.

"Tamaki," Kyoya interjected, "I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. If you were going through something so bad it made you want to commit suicide, do you think you'd be keen on meeting new people, especially with little to no advance notice?"

Tamaki blinked.

"But… meeting new people is fun… Isn't it?"

Kyoya let out a slow, exasperated sigh.

"I thought we'd cheer her up, is all," Tamaki continued. "Honestly, I was going to suggest we all go. After all, twenty relatively happy girls versus one very, very sad girl - I kind of feel like there's no contest. Especially since wherever there are women in need of being made happy, the host club is duty-bound to go."

Hikaru buried his face in his hands.

...

"So what is Kaoru like?" They were sitting in the back of Tamaki's limo. The rest of the hosts had agreed with Kyoya, and decided to put off meeting Kaoru until she was better.

Hikaru looked out the window, and felt tears rising to his eyes as he remembered the last time he had ridden in a car with Kaoru - the day she was wearing a black kimono.

"She's really sweet and I love her," he said. "I've never loved anybody more."

...

By the time they got to the hospital, Hikaru had managed to convince Tamaki that springing his company on Kaoru unannounced might not have been the best plan after all. So they parted ways at the door and Tamaki clapped Hikaru on the shoulder once more - a good deal more gingerly.

"I'll wait right here," he said, motioning to the row of seats in the antechamber of the inpatient unit. "You take good care of your little sister" - he added with his usual heavy-handed pathos. "I want her back and with us and safe and sound - and that's an order!"

Hikaru assured him that he would do his best and turned around, shrugging stiffly as the double doors to the ward closed behind him. He had not shown Tamaki a picture of Kaoru yet, and to hear him carry on, the Host Club King might have been imagining a cute little girl with flaxen curls and cheeks like cherries. Tamaki, to Hikaru's slight perturbation, had always thought of the host club as a family - not only in the no one left behind or forgotten sense, but so far as to assign specific roles to each of the members. Tamaki, as the leader, was the Father. Kyouya, as second in command, was Mother. Mori and Honey were uncles. He, Hikaru, was the rebellious teenage son. And now, he almost wondered if Tamaki had set his sights on roping Kaoru in to be the daughter - perhaps as a tea girl or a decorative, guest-friendly piece of furniture. Something about the fact perturbed him not a little, but he did not have time to analyze the feeling, as the nurse on duty had looked up from verifying her notes and told him, with a smile, to go straight through. And after that all he could think of was not some short, flaxen-haired doll of someone else's imagination, but Kaoru herself - the same willowy goddess she had always been. When he walked in, she was sitting up in bed and looking down - and, as always, appeared to be apologizing for taking up space even inside her oversized T-shirt. Her leg, in a cast, lay stretched out atop the covers alongside the other, thinner and smaller one. Hikaru's voice caught in his throat.

"Hikaru? You're here alone?" she asked, barely surprised, and shifted higher against the headboard.

Hikaru smiled and put a finger to his lips. "It's okay," he said. "Mom's booked solid today and dad's out of town. I came with a friend. I'm supposed to be at an after school activity, but no one needs to know."

He smiled again and pulled a chair up to her bedside. Kaoru had a new and nicer room since he last saw her, having been transferred from the acute care ward to the convalescence wing. It looked far less like a hospital than the rest of the place, with seasonal ikebana decor and walls painted a muted olive. But Kaoru still looked smaller and sadder than he had ever seen her, and gazed vacantly out the window – which faced a wall – as she squeezed her fingers between her knees.

"I want to hug you – can I hug you?"

She pressed her lips."We probably shouldn't."

Both were silent for a moment.

"I guess we can hold hands."

Hikaru nodded and moved his chair closer, reaching across the bed.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "Are you cold? Do you want my jacket? Or another blanket or something?"

Her fingers were like icicles.

"No, I'm okay."

Hikaru massaged each of her fingers in turn, rubbing firm circles from knuckle to tip.

"I guess I just came to say I'm sorry," he said after a minute. "I said I wanted to make you happy, but I was selfish. If I hadn't done what I did, none of this would've happened."

"Don't be silly, Hikaru." She gave hollow laugh. "I think you're ascribing a little too much significance to certain things. If you think I did what I did because you put your junk inside me, you can relax."

"No, Kaoru, I KNOW."

Her face ricocheted from the window as if slapped.

"You... know? You know what?"

"Everything. What you found out about yourself. And why you're really here."

Kaoru made a noise like a frightened gerbil and tried to pull her hands away, but Hikaru held them steady.

"And it IS my fault," he added. "If we hadn't done it, or, at the very least, if I hadn't been so stupid as to get us caught, you might not have had to know for a while. On top of everything else, this was the last straw. I get that. And I'm a bad brother and a bad man for letting it happen."

Kaoru was looking wildly around her and seemed like she would have bolted fast and far had Hikaru's hold not tightened to a death-grip.

"Hikaru, please," she whimpered. "You're embarrassing me…"

"I'm sorry, Kaoru. I'm sorry… I know. But… I didn't want you to be alone in this." He pulled her hands closer.

She did not answer, but her face petrified for a moment, and then a line of tears formed on each of her lower eyelids. Her elbows went slack, her fingers clenched against his, and then the lines broke and raced down her cheeks almost simultaneously. He watched her cry – with what seemed like just her shoulders – for a very long time.

"I don't want to hurt you, Kaoru," he whispered once her shaking began to subside. "I just wish I could share your pain. It hurts to see you like this."

And I'm a bad person, no matter what you say. I thought I'd found a reason to change. I wanted to catch all your tears. And yet here we are.

The muscles around Kaoru's collar bones tightened, and she let out a sigh that might have been a sob. A leaf on a vine, which had somehow trained its way around the window of the tenth floor, shook in the wind as the brick turned dark and the sun disappeared.

"Kaoru. I want to help. Please. I know you might be feeling a lot of new and overwhelming things right now, but tell me what you need me to do and I'll do it."

Kaoru's shoulders had quieted down and she sat perfectly still, staring at their entwined fingers.

"I don't know what I need," she said at last. "I'm just... confused, is all. I don't know how I'm supposed to move on after something like this."

Hikaru allowed himself the tiniest sliver of smile.

"I mean," she said, "Sex is one of the most important ways you define yourself... Isn't it?"

"I don't know, is it?"

Kaoru's chin snapped up.

"What do you mean, 'is it?' Of course it is. We live in a binary world, for better or for worse." Her features waxed derisive. "People LIKE boxes. The zodiac, blood types, personality tests - none of that has any scientific basis, but that's never stopped anyone. So if you're going to give me any crap about how all that matters is who you are as a person, you can save it. Because no one lives in a vacuum. Who you are as a person is how you relate to others and how others see you - including the boxes they put you in. It's something you take in from the moment you're old enough to know what's going on. And you can either rebel against it or choose to go along with it, but there's no way to escape it. Trust me, I know. I've tried it both ways."

Hikaru listened, swallowing the urge to poke holes in Kaoru's argument, and hid his bemusement behind a slightly wider smile once she was done.

"So it seems you feel like you've been evicted from your box," he said. "And now you're not sure where you belong."

"Pretty much." Having let off some venom, Kaoru sagged backwards, their arms stretching out like a suspension bridge.

"Maybe you can make a new box."

"Yeah, I don't think it works that way."

"Well, ok then, so what do you feel you've lost by getting evicted?"

Kaoru looked slowly back to the window. The alleyway between buildings was short, and Hikaru wondered if from where she sat Kaoru could see a sliver of highway in the distance.

"I don't know."

"Did you really like it all that much? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember you saying something about how gender norms made you feel inadequate."

"Yeah, I guess I did." Kaoru paused. "But I mean, it was all I had, and after 15 years I sort of felt like I'd figured out a way to make it my own. I thought, okay, maybe I got a bad hand, but there's nothing I can do except try different things and see what happens. And then I learn that I could've walked away the whole time. That I didn't even belong at the table."

"Well, maybe that a good thing, then?" Hikaru ventured a smirk. "You have a choice. An opportunity, maybe."

"An opportunity? Really?" Kaoru's voice grew acrid again. "An opportunity to do what? Wear baggy clothes, have burping contests with my friends, leave the toilet seat up, and go around calling everyone 'dude' and 'bro'?"

"Wha -"

"I mean, when you learned you weren't really your parents' son, did you see THAT as an opportunity?"

"That's different."

Kaoru sighed and lowered her eyes, as if weighing whether to set aside her combat gear.

"No, I really don't think it is," she said. "I mean, think about it. First you live with the inkling, for years, that something's wrong. And then one day you find out for sure, and you'd think that would make you feel better. But it doesn't. Because once you know it's real there's no way to escape it."

"Ok, fair enough." He paused, taking her hands and raising them to his lips. "Though for what it's worth, I don't think it will feel that way forever. I think you'll find your place. And I don't think it'll involve leaving the toilet seat up, either."

She looked at him with all the trust of a wounded deer staring down the huntsman.

"And I know I'll like you no matter what gender you are. In fact, I want to be there for you. You should talk to me when you feel lonely. You can make calls from here, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded slowly. "But I don't have my cell phone, and I don't know your number off the top of my head."

"Heh, rough life. I wouldn't last an hour without my cell phone." Hikaru chuckled wistfully. "But you should call me, seriously. I'll write my number down for you. And I'll pick up, I promise. I'll step outside if I'm in class or something."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. And speaking of class, we've been learning about Hemingway, what with our summer reading and all, and I found a quote by him that's pretty apropos. It goes like this: 'I'm with you. No matter what else you have in your head I'm with you and I love you.' " He paused, scouting for a change in her expression. "You know, Hemingway isn't so bad, actually," he added. "His writing is the strong and silent type. It doesn't say much, but when it does, it packs a punch. I guess I just needed to slow down a bit to realize it."

Kaoru still looked more than a little backed up, so he let her hand rest in his and stroked it with the other.

"School will be okay, I promise," he said. "I'll be there with you every step of the way, and I'll help you. Just focus on getting better for the time being, okay?"

She nodded, but her eyes still looked far away.

"Mr. Hitachiin, five minutes" - Hikaru heard a nurse at the door. Kaoru quickly pulled her hands away and Hikaru spun around with a winsome smile for the woman who looked like she was about to say more, but thought better of it and vanished.

Hikaru turned back to Kaoru. "Anyway," he made a brave show of chuckling. "As you know I'm a broke-ass motherfucker for the time being, but I still wanted to give you something." He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a makeshift origami envelope that looked like it held something more three-dimensional than a piece of paper. "Don't open it yet, though." He slid the envelope across the bed. "Open it later."

…

After Hikaru left, Kaoru looked at the envelope and felt like her head was about to detach from her neck. And she might have sat there for a very long time if she had not heard a knock on the door.

" 'Lo, Kaoru, are you there?"

Before Kaoru could answer, the door opened and Ame sashayed in, glossy magazine in hand.

"So-o, who'd you see? Your MAN?" She smiled, cocking her head and pulling on an lock so black it had a tinge of blue under the lamps. "The nurse told me you were with a visitor, and that I should stop barging in on you, and then she had the gall to drag me off to a PROCEDURE, the little skank -"

"Ame, you're PSYCHIC." Kaoru rolled her eyes, snapping awake. "You should make a career out of it." After all of twelve hours of knowing each other, Ame had exploded into her room no less than fourteen times, which was enough to develop a rapport of gentle teasing that had become a second language. Part of it stemmed from the fact that Ame was about as capable of offense as a garden slug, and after a while Kaoru had no choice but to give in and accept her offer of friendship "till death or a hospital discharge doth us part."

"A-a-and, how did it go?"

"Alright, I guess."

"Ooh, did he give you a love-letter?" Ame plopped down on the same chair Hikaru had sat on and gestured at the envelope in Kaoru's hands.

Kaoru looked down at the envelope. The paper had begun to wrinkle and grow puffy where she had held it.

"I'm not sure, actually."

"Well, I think you should open it. The man tried, after all. It's the least you can do."

"I'm kind of afraid, to be honest."

"Hah! Well, then I'm here for moral support." Ame beamed. "Go on."

Kaoru sighed and weighed whether to mention that Ame staring at the thing with crazed intensity did nothing to make it less scary, but thought better and folded back the flap.

In addition to a small piece of paper folded in two, the envelope contained a button. The button had a comfortable gravity about it and was brass, with a bright, cerulean glaze filling in the crevices. The insignia, just like Hikaru's blazer, spelled "OR." Kaoru flipped open the note. "Second button from the top," the inside read, "And straight on till morning." **

(**In Japan, a boy will give the second button of his uniform to the girl loves because it is the one closest to the heart.)


	15. Fitting

In the days that followed, Kaoru's state devolved to one of complete emotional incontinence. One minute, she would be staring out the window, sidelong through the alleyway between buildings, and the next she would feel the telltale sting in the back of her throat, and be bawling for all she was worth about everything and nothing. On another occasion, she was watching a balding patient playing Go in the common area with the resident foreigner, a man given to wearing checkered trucker shirts and beanies. She had smiled, and felt like her chest was going to burst and send pieces of lung flying in all directions. It was not always a sad crying, either. When she cried, she felt like a roman candle shooting into the sky. It was as if a dam had been broken from a conspiracy uniting every drop of water in the land. If the tears caught her off-guard when she was practicing walking down the hall with a nurse, she would bite into her fist and cry silently, pretending that her leg was hurting her. When she was in her room, she would cry squeezing her eyes shut and all but screaming her head off into her pillow, and with every cry she felt more perfectly, indescribably incandescent. 

Kaoru Suzumiya Hitachiin. Girl-boy. In stupid, reckless, hopeless, inconvenient, can't-live-without-each-other love with her moronic Labrador pup of a twin brother. Nice to meet you. Normal? Hah! Never heard of it, not around here!

She still felt like she had taken a giant step backward when it came to talking to Hikaru, but at Ame's prodding she would march bravely to the phones during lunch and after 5 p.m. every day -- after all, she didn't ACTUALLY want to pull him out of class. He answered without fail, and there was always a hum of voices in the background during the first few moments. The first time around, he seemed to have sensed her uncertainty, and every time thereafter he would deploy his seemingly expert skills in talking to shy people. He would tell her sweet nothings about his day -- but not too much, in case she was still afraid of school. And he did not ask her any open-ended questions -- just ones that could be answered with a yes or a no -- and more only if she chose. She would tell him that it was nice to hear his voice -- and it was. His voice had a different timbre when he spoke to her. Not one more delicate, exactly, but somehow less… mischievous and cockeyed except when he was trying to be. And as time went by she began telling him about the people around her.

"Hikaru, this place is crazy," she had said one time, her shyness beating a momentary retreat. "I mean, I thought I was in a bad way, but sometimes you get this reality check, you know… There's this one foreigner -- he told us about his friend who got sick. As in, cancer-sick. He could not afford the medical bills, so he started cooking meth… METH, Hikaru."

"Oh, Kaoru." Hikaru laughed. "You know I miss you, right?" 

Ame, who knew everything except that Hikaru was her brother, complemented Kaoru on her progress. "If you're ready to cry, you're ready to face up to it," she said, and helped Kaoru dab cold water on her eyes so the staff would not notice and decide to commit her. And so the days went by, and by the end of the week Kaoru was discharged, with orders for psychiatric follow-up. The balding old man who liked to play Go hugged her and told her to do her best. The foreigner, whose name was Jesse,** shook her hand and told her to keep it real. And she and Ame exchanged phone numbers and parted with the solemn promise to meet again someday -- "that is," Ame said, "if I ever get to see the outside of this place. At the rate it's been going, they might still be examining my head after I'm dead."

(**I don't know why Jesse Pinkman is in Japan. Maybe after Walt died he drove all the way across the ocean.)

…

"Aw, come on, Kaoru. I think it looks really nice."

Kaoru had stepped out of the changing room, took one look at herself in the mirror, and began to cry. 

Hikaru, Yuzuha, and the seamstress, tape measure in hand, stood a few paces away. It was Sunday, and Kaoru was due to start school -- belatedly -- the following day.

"Well, Kaoru, I'm sorry to say, but that IS the uniform," said Yuzuha. "Although, I've never been fond of the girls' uniforms over at the high school myself. They seem so… old fashioned."

Kaoru was staring, mortified, at her reflection in the mirror, and had turned red to the roots of her hair. Old fashioned was right. The dress looked like something straight from the turn of the last century. The skirt hung like a heavy lead tent and not only seemed to go on forever but, adjusted for height, sprawled out far too much to each side. The sleeves formed overinflated bells over the shoulders, making them look five times broader. The bodice ironed out her torso flatter than any article of clothing she had ever worn. And the whole thing clashed grotesquely with her short cropped hair and made the plastic boot that contained her cast look like something that belonged to a cyborg.

"Of course, if it makes you that unhappy I could try to get you into Lobelia Girls' Academy," Yuzuha said, surveying Kaoru up and down with pursed lips. "Their uniforms, at least, are a little more in step with the times. My sister-in-law is an alumna. There might be time to give her a call."

"No, Mom! Not Lobelia!" Hikaru gasped. "That place is full of sex-crazed lesbians! They'll eat Kaoru alive."

"Hikaru!" Yuzuha hissed, a blush coloring her cheeks visibly even under her powder.

Kaoru sobbed harder, the wings of her uniform fluttering.

"Pardon me, ma'am," the seamstress spoke up, her voice barely rising over the weeping Kaoru. "I think I may have an idea. Just the other week we had a boy come in -- sweet little thing just starting high school, but he looked like he couldn't have been more than ten years old. He ended up leaving in a girls' uniform -- with shorts instead of a skirt. Perhaps if Miss doesn't feel comfortable in the girls' uniform, maybe we could try a blazer?"

Yuzuha and Hikaru had been trading a series of jabs with their eyes -- but as soon she heard the woman's words Yuzuha cut the match short.

"That's… allowed?" she asked.

"Well." The woman's face flushed a shade. "I don't think there's a rule against it. I just know it's been done before."

Ten minutes later, Kaoru stepped out of the changing booth again, and Hikaru's smile transformed from the Hollywood one he pulled out whenever the occasion warranted to the smile of the child on Christmas morning, rolled together with that of a boy laying eyes on his prom date for the first time. Yuzuha's smile had a new shade of warmth, mixed with something that bordered on the impressed. And the seamstress had raised a hand to her mouth.

Hikaru looked back at her from the mirror -- but no, it wasn't Hikaru. It was… Well, she was not sure who it was, exactly. The being certainly did not know how to stand with the same alpha male stance as Hikaru yet, and judging by the face the poor creature was beset on all sides and ready to bolt in a way Hikaru's ego would never have allowed him to do. But if anything, the Ouran blazer blew her old one straight out of the water. It wasn't just the fact that it tuck in her waist and square out her chest in a way that looked anything but out of place, or the fact that the pants were elegant and black and flared just enough at the calf to hide her knobby knees. Something about the lines of the cloth -- tailored, at this point by a series of pins only, to her natural form -- lent the rest of her features a new, exhilarating, almost ice-cut sort of beauty. Indeed, even as she looked on, the shoulders of the being in the mirror began to straighten on their own accord, and the eyes came to betray a jaunty sparkle.

Yuzuha was the first to recover her senses.

"Well, that looks a lot better -- doesn't it, Kaoru? Perhaps we could try it with a pencil skirt. That way you'll look like a real business lady."

"No -- I definitely like the pants," Kaoru said quickly, bobbing her head up and down for emphasis as she stared, transfixed, at her legs. They had transformed from what she had always judged to be part emaciated and part muscular-but-not-in-a-good-way to straight as two landing strips.

"I like them too," said Hikaru, coming up behind her and placing his forearm on her shoulder. His eyes sparkled as his gaze sought Kaoru's in the mirror.

"Alright, well, that's fine," said Yuzuha, materializing at Kaoru's side and picking up Hikaru's forearm with her fingertips by the watch. "But I do foresee one problem."

"Oh, the fact that we'll look almost exactly the same?" Hikaru beamed. "Well, I wouldn't consider that's not a problem per se."

"Yeah, it's not like there's nothing to distinguish us. I mean, I'm the one with the cast. And afterwards, I'm sure we can think of something --"

"And confusion can be fun! We can creep people out by speaking in unison, and when Kaoru's cast comes off we can play a game called 'guess which one's Hikaru'!"

"Yeah, a game anyone can easily win by following one us to the bathroom." Kaoru gave a tentative smile.

"Ah, but that's why we'll be using the unisex -- a-k-a the handicapped-slash-companion bathroom!" Hikaru wiggled his eyebrows. 

"O-kay, then!" Yuzuha said, clapping her hands once. "Twin boys -- or so it would seem to the untrained eye. This should be interesting."

…

It was evening, and Kaoru's new uniform lay out on her bed, her books sat on a small, new, white writing table, and a tan, would-be-vintage leather book bag hung over the back of the chair. At first, Kaoru had sat gazing at it all and thinking. Then, when worry outstripped thought she had gotten up change into sweatpants and a t-shirt. And when she had finally gotten her mind to quiet down again, Hikaru walked in with a knock on the half-open door.

"Hello, princess," he said. He, too, had changed into his home-clothes -- cargo shorts and a hoodie -- and was hiding something behind his back.

"Aw. Hello, Hikaru." Kaoru felt the blood rush traitorously to her cheeks. "But… Don't be silly. I'm not a princess."

"You are to me. And I got you a gift." He lowered himself to a half-crouch by her side and pulled a long-stemmed rose from behind his back. "One of Noda the gardener's prize-winning roses. What I had to go through to get it -- well, let's just say it involved him chasing me down with a pitchfork."

"Hikaru!" Kaoru had not been in a mood for jokes, but smiled just the same. "Noda WORKS for you. I seriously doubt he would chase you with a pitchfork. I doubt he even HAS a pitchfork. He seems like a really nice man."

"Yeah, you'd think that. But it only goes to show you don't know jack about Noda." Hikaru looked her dead in the eye and pressed his lips, biting back a smirk.

Kaoru laughed and Hikaru allowed himself the grin he had been suppressing.

"Alright, fair enough," she said, taking the rose and getting up. "Let's find some water for this treasure."

"Okay -- but first…" Hikaru got up to join her and took her by the hand. "I wanted to give you something else, too." He pulled her closer, deftly, and put his other hand on the small of her back. "That is, if we're still an item," he whispered, pressing their foreheads together. 

"An item? Uh… I -- I guess?"

"So we are?"

"Yeah… Uh -- if you're okay with it, that is."

"I'm okay with it if you are."

"Okay."

He let go of her hand and took her chin, ever so gently, and drew her face to his. If before Kaoru's blush had been the tiniest hint of ready-to-burst ripeness on the skin a peach, the gesture alone set her cheeks burning redder than the rose in her hand. In her hearts of hearts her feelings still mortified her -- so much so that at the oddest of moments it would feel like everybody knew, and she wanted to bury her face in her hands and disappear. But Hikaru's hand on her chin was enough to quiet every worry. Indeed, while she had always had had trouble loving herself, loving Hikaru was surprisingly easy. Sometimes, she was by turns incredulous and annoyed at how he could be the way he was -- perfectly confident and completely untouched by so many things. But at other times, it was just the thing she wanted and lacked.

He drew her chin closer and their lips met, his mouth and tongue drawing her in, nipping and massaging the hesitation from her lips until she, too, grew braver and let her tongue forage inside to play with its mate.

"Oh, Kaoru, I missed you." He whispered, barely above a breath. "I still miss you."

"But, Hikaru… I'm right here."

"I know, but I still miss you. It's like I can never get close enough. The only way I could get close enough is if our skin melted together, and I got to experience the wonderful adventure that is being Kaoru."

"Adventure?" she chuckled with just the corners of her mouth. She put her hand on his wrist and lowered his arm, twisting out of his grasp like a dancer negotiating a pirouette. "Well -- that's ONE way of putting it, I guess."

Before he could say anything, she had crossed the room and was halfway to the bathroom. Hikaru sighed and sank on the bed, and Kaoru picked up a decorative flute-vase from atop of a dresser and disappeared behind the door, turning on the faucet.

"Well, adventure or no adventure," he said, putting on a smile when she emerged again, "I wanted to talk to you about something."

Oh, dear. There he goes again with the awkward serious-conversation segways. Kaoru stopped in her tracks and lowered the flute-vase to the level of her waist. At least -- thank heavens -- he didn't say he "needed to talk."

Hikaru smiled and beckoned to her, petting the space on the bed next to him.

"First of all, if you're worried about, tomorrow -- don't. People know I was adopted. A few people even think I was the product of an affair on my dad's part with some exotic foreign lady, and the adoption was just mom's way of deflecting attention. Or they think there might've been some under the table surrogacy. Since in many ways blood's still pretty important, I guess they didn't really discourage the rumor – even though mom had been trying to be revolutionary. But either way, I don't think it's going to seem that weird that I have a long-lost twin. You won't even need to say anything if you don't want to. You can just be the shy and mysterious twin, and I can do all the talking."

"Okay." Kaoru hesitated. "But, um, speaking of that, how much detail are we going to go into -- about me? I mean, it's not that I'm ashamed, but I don't want to make you look bad. After all, correct me if I'm wrong, but in families like yours --"

"Oh, it shouldn't be too bad. We'll just focus on the part of the story about your parents' death. And if people pry we can make you an orphan like in Charles Dickens: real parents died -- maybe birth mom didn't want to part with both kids and kept you. Then she passed away and my family lost touch for whatever reason, so you were put up for adoption, heiress to millions and never knew it. People love that kind of stuff. And I mean, we technically don't know that that's NOT how it happened."

Kaoru breathed a slow sigh and ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. "Alright." She nodded. 

"I wanted to talk about something else, though, too," said Hikaru. "You see, there's this after school club I'm in --"

"A -- a club?" Kaoru caught herself just shy of scoffing, brow furrowing in bewilderment. He's worried about a CLUB? Now? 

Hikaru nodded and beckoned again, indicating the same spot. This time she acquiesced and approached, lowering the vase onto the bedside table before taking a seat.

"I just wanted you to be aware of it, even though I don't think it's the sort of club I should be in anymore, now that we're together. You see, it's a… host club."

"A… host club?" Kaoru tented her eyebrows, her mouth forming a perturbed half-smile. "But you're in high school. Isn't that --" She had certainly heard the term before, but to her knowledge a host club was a strictly over 20** -- if not an altogether seamy -- sort of business.

(**20 is the legal drinking age in Japan.)

"It's a high school host club. So it's all pretty tame. We just talk to the girls and serve them tea, and sometimes there are themed events. But like I said, I think I'm going to quit. I just didn't want you to be alarmed if it seems like that's how everyone thinks of me -- as one of the hosts in the host club."

Kaoru felt like she had been standing on the open back of a streetcar and the thing had taken off with without warning. Suddenly, a LOT of things fell into place -- like why he seemed to live like he was constantly "on," and why all his movements were so deucedly ELEGANT, like he had learned to walk in six-inch heels with books atop his head. Before, she had chalked it up, unsatisfyingly, to class difference -- the way she could never figure out what parts of him were rehearsed and what ones simply WERE. So many of his mannerisms -- from tenting his fingers under his chin to the way he arched his eyebrow -- seemed to bespeak at once a cavalier nihilism and a certain functionality -- if not a servility. And now, it no longer felt like a contradiction. She lowered her head and raised her hands partway, and felt a dizzy spinning in her stomach. 

"You never told me about this earlier."

"I'm sorry. I should have."

"So why didn't you?"

"Well, I guess it was because I liked you and I wanted you to like me too. I didn't want you to think I was just doing the host thing."

"WERE you doing the host thing?"

"No, of course not." She looked up and to the side. He was balancing on the edge of the bed, looking ready to fall off and very sheepish, and Kaoru thought she might have hallucinated a blush rising to his cheeks. "Well -- maybe a little, early on. I wanted a chance to act suave with you, and treat you like a girl I liked. But I didn't know what you were thinking. And, let's face it, there was about a million to one chance you'd feel the same. I needed a way out if things got awkward, so I added a little theatre to it. Like calling you lady, and tucking the hair behind the ear, and that thing I do with my wrist when I pour. I don't touch the guests at the club, obviously, but you get the idea. It seems out of place -- like it's too much -- but that's what made it the perfect cover at the time."

"I… I liked that thing you did with your wrist."

"Well, then I can do it again for you." He smiled, leaning in and placing a hand on hers. "But that's just it. It's the same action, but it can mean everything or nothing, depending on who you're with. And I don't want there to be any confusion anymore."

She did not reply, so he took the hand in his and brought it to his lips, planting them firmly on the first knuckle. "From now on -- one action, one meaning."

Kaoru was looking like she had been picked up by a tempest, knocked about, and spat up ashore on an unfamiliar island. But by degrees her fingers in his hand had come to relax, and he opened one eye and peeked upward.

"But, what are you going to tell them?" she asked. "I thought we were going to keep it quiet for a while."

"I'll tell them I have my reasons."

She let herself slump against his side, and he put his arm around her shoulder.

"You seem worried." 

Worried? Gee, where do I even begin? -- she all but laughed to herself. And anyway… This whole thing really needs to stop feeling like an out-of-body experience. 

It made sense, of course, that she had felt like she had been dropped from a dizzying height when she found out for a fact that she was not the only one, and that Hikaru had had enough experience -- even if it was in an artificial setting -- to distill courtship down to -- horror of horrors -- a technique. But another part of her felt like it was ludicrous to even insist on any kind of legitimacy or acknowledgement for what they had.

"I just… What if it doesn't work out? I mean… us, in the real world. And then you will have quit something you like because of me. I mean, you do like it, right?" She shivered a bit. "Or else you wouldn't have stayed a part of it."

"I used to like it. But don't want to be chatting up other girls now that I have you, even if it's all just fun and games."

"But you probably have friends you like to hang out with in the probably club… The other hosts, right? And, uh, regulars who will miss you…"

"I can find other friends, and regulars can find other hosts. But I won't find another Kaoru."

Kaoru was about to advance another counterattack, this even more feeble than the last, but Hikaru cupped her chin again and she knew the discussion was over. 

"Hikaru --" The syllables tumbled headlong from her mouth before she had time to draw breath. 

Her cheeks glowed red as if they had been burnt, and suddenly she barely had the presence of mind to gag at the thought of herself looking, no doubt, like the heroine of a sappy drama -- or to remind herself that this was far too surreal, unnatural, and all-around crazy to have a prayer of ending well. Her chest swelled like a sail ready to carry her away, and her spine turned to water. Hikaru seemed to have sensed it, and placed his hand on the small of her back.

"Sir. It's 10:59."

Kaoru's chest spasmed and she recoiled and spun around.

Toroko stood in the doorway, a laundry basket in her hands. Whatever her expression had been, Kaoru was not quick enough to catch it, and the maid's smile was as sunny and spotless as could be.

Hikaru got up, hastily, and his hand spasmed around Kaoru's tighter than she anticipated. 

…

When he was gone, Kaoru went back to studying the outfit on the bed. Come morning, she would be meeting countless new people, and none of them could know the full truth even when it came to the most basic things about her. She still did not know how she felt about the possibility of identifying as a man, or even about dressing like one, so she was thankful that Hikaru had not pressed the issue. All she knew was that given the state of everything, the uniform felt like a disguise, but the disguise was a fitting one. If nothing else, it had given her the shot of confidence she needed. Indeed, had Kaoru been more given to fantasy, she might have teased herself with the notion of waking up to find the uniform possessed some magical power, and would make her see the world as Hikaru did. After all, from where Hikaru stood things always seemed so much easier.


	16. My Girl, You'll Be a Man

The first day at Ouran proved every bit as harrowing as Kaoru imagined.

Hikaru had held her hand in the car, and continued to hold it through the death-march to the large oaken double doors, but that was about the extent of her comfort. Before school had even started, she had the dubious pleasure of getting invited to the dean's office, and learning that the dean knew a great deal about her. Then, she got her hand nearly shaken off by class representatives Kazukiyo Soga and Momoka Kurakano. And halfway thought homeroom she felt like she was ready to pee her pants - and not exactly from excitement - as name after name was called, and she realized she had seen half of them in some capacity or another - on billboards, as brand names, and on the front pages of newspapers. At the end of roll, Kaoru was asked to introduce herself. She could not remember what she had said - all she recalled was that once she was done the class exploded with questions - mostly in the vein of "what happened to your leg," "where have you been until now?" and "so which twin is the evil one?" It took the teacher nearly a minute to call the room to order. And then class started - and whether owing to a week of missed class, nine years of doing next to nothing in school, or the fact that Ouran was indeed one of the strongest academic institutions in the land, every other word from the teachers' mouth went sailing straight over Kaoru's head. By the end of the day, Kaoru was more stressed than she could ever remember feeling, and it hardly helped that in place of gym class she was called into the school psychologist's office. By that point, thankfully, talking to professionals was not a new thing. Yuzuke had rifled through his contacts from university to put together a crack team of the best psychiatrists to address Kaoru's mental health concerns. But Kaoru was still more than perturbed to find out that the very nice, motherly woman ALSO knew entirely too much about her. So when school was over, Kaoru had ended up giving Hikaru the slip, and he found her fifteen minutes later, sitting on a bench in an entirely different part of the grounds and staring dully at the basketball players warming up for practice.

"Hey."

She nodded silently without looking up. He sat down beside her and sidled in close.

"Not feeling too well?"

She shook her head.

"The first day is always hard. But it's over, and tomorrow'll be easier."

She looked up, and he immediately knew he had said the wrong thing.

"How… How do you know that?" she said acridly. "I don't belong here. I had no idea what was going on in any of the classes. But I guess it's my own fault. I never did anything in school before, ever. In fact, I'm pretty sure I only got into high school because someone added a few points to my score for athletics. And it's only a matter of time before they figure that out, and then I'm done for. I mean, I'm on the dean's radar already."

She sighed. So much for that. At least from the grave, she had hoped her parents might be proud of her, what with the completely undeserved chance that had fallen into her lap. But - who would have thought - she had blown that, too, and let both them and Yuzuha down.

Hikaru smiled. "EVERYONE is on the dean's radar, Kaoru. What you got was just the standard welcome. With the amount of money our parents pay, it makes sense that they'd want to keep careful tabs on us. It doesn't mean you're in trouble." He put a hand on her shoulder. "Look, when we get home, we can go through things slowly and figure out what the last thing you understand is, and go from there."

Kaoru's vision grew blurry, and she stared even more fixedly at her hands.

"Are you sure that's going to help?" she said in a low voice. "I don't want to keep you back, and I feel like I'm so far behind I'll never catch up."

"It's worth a try, and if it doesn't…" - Hikaru leaned in - "Here's Ouran's dirty little secret. They almost never kick anyone out. I mean, even if you released chickens into the cafeteria and ran around screaming 'free range eggs for everyone' - which BY THE WAY happened only last year - you'd probably only get detention. But if you're just struggling with the work, they'll try about a million times to help you first. We can always talk to the teachers - together if you want - and failing that Ouran's got a small army of tutors on retainer."

He watched her chest rise and fall as she continued to avoid eye contact, seemingly bracing every fiber of her being against an onslaught of something or other.

"Kaoru, come on. You've been through so much. Most people would have cracked by now. But you got through it, and you'll get through this, too. We just have take it one step at a time."

"I just I miss being good at something." Kaoru raised her head a bit to gesture at the players.  
"Oh. Well." Hikaru straightened up. "Maybe they'll take you on the team when you get better?"

"I don't know." She sighed again."They said it'll be a few weeks before they'll even consider taking this thing off" - she nodded at her leg - "And if it hasn't healed by then I might have to have surgery."

"So, maybe next year?"

She sighed. "I don't know. At this level, if you've been out of it for a year you might as well have been out for ten. And who know - the kids here probably had Olympic coaches since they were two or something. I probably won't make the cut anyway."

"No, Kaoru, don't say that." He rubbed her back gingerly, but her shoulders only slumped further. "Hey. I think I have an idea for something else you can be good at."

He hopped to his feet and held out a hand. Kaoru pulled herself up with a dejected grunt, and Hikaru started walking toward the colonnade of the school.

"Where are we going?" Kaoru trotted behind him, and after a minute or two Hikaru slowed down his step so she would have an easier time keeping up.  
"The Host Club."

"The Host Club? But I thought you said -"

"I know. But then I had an idea. I figured it might be fun if you tried your hand at being a host. With me."

"A… WHAT?"

"I thought we could try our hand at an incestuous twin act. That way you and I can spend more time together, I get to fawn over YOU in public, and the focus will be on us as an item as opposed to the typical pseudo-romantic back and forth with the guests. We could even test the waters of taking our relationship public. And having a couple of good-looking guys with homosexual tendencies will earn the club high points, so everybody wins - right?"

"Yes, everybody wins," Kaoru echoed, her tone suddenly sepulchral. She stopped short, and Hikaru spun around. They had just finished climbing the steps, and were a few feet shy of the door to Music Room 3.

"Yes, everybody wins," she repeated. "Except Kaoru - as always. 'Cuz there's just one problem, you see."

Hikaru cast a surprised look at her.

"But Kaoru…" he said with a slight smile, looking her up and down. "You should see yourself. You're a regulation bishounen in that blazer. You've got both guys and girls staring at you. And wouldn't it be so much better to lead the princesses around by the nose and make them swoon, instead of worrying about whether they're going to accept you into their little cliques?"

"Uh…" Kaoru stared at her brother, thunderstruck, and then her eyes grew wide.

All day, he had introduced her as simply "Kaoru" or "my twin" - never "my sister." And come to think of it, the teachers, too, had avoided saying anything that might have pointed positively to a gender, in all likelihood choosing to err on the side of caution when what they saw on the roll clashed so violently with what appeared before their eyes. They had even gone so far as to avoid personal pronouns...

"You… PLANNED this, didn't you?" - she whispered, her face draining.

For a second, Hikaru looked like a dog caught befouling a lawn, but hid behind his trademark smile almost too quickly.

"That whole thing about quitting the host club - you were never going to do that, were you?"

"No, I was -"

Kaoru's face had begun, steadily, to curl into an expression not unlike that of a Greek tragedy mask.

"Oh, no - oh, no, Kaoru, come on, don't cry…" He crossed the few paces of floor that separated them, and put a hand on her arm, but she pulled away with a violence he had not seen since the funeral. "Look," he said, hesitantly. "I'm sorry. You don't have to do it if you don't want to. I just thought - since you already know what it's like to be a girl, you might want to test the waters and see what it's like to be a guy. But it was a dumb idea - I shouldn't have brought it up."

"So" - She swallowed a gasp, as if coming up for air - "You thought you'd just assign me a gender? Without so much as asking me first?"

She looked like she might have said something else, but whatever forces had kept the volley of tears at bay suffered a sudden and precipitous defeat, and she began to weep - silently at first, then louder by the second. A few students passing within earshot paused as they rounded a corner, and craned their necks to see what was going on.

"Look, Kaoru, please - please don't cry… I'm… sorry," Hikaru whispered desperately, taking another step toward her. "That's not how it is - you know it's not. I just thought you liked random turns of events like this. I wanted to surprise you."

"I DO, but this is ridiculous," she well-near wailed. She had been avoiding eye contact until then - the way she usually did when she was embarrassed or upset - but suddenly her face shot up and she looked him straight in the eye, and Hikaru almost swallowed his tongue in surprise. Her cheeks were glistening with tears, blazing as if they'd been slapped, and Kaoru looked angry. Not just unhappy or dismayed - actually angry.

"Have you ever tried to think, for just one moment, what it might be like for me?" she sieved through her teeth. "To lose everything you thought made you who you are? To have things happen to you and to feel like you have no agency and no say - in anything? Do you ever wonder WHY I might have wanted out? But no, you DON'T think. Because you're a spoiled little brat and thinking is an alien concept!"

"I… I'm sorry?" Hikaru shrunk back. "I'm guess I'm still having a hard time to making sense of it myself. I mean, it's not every day you find out -"

"Oh, so it's difficult for YOU?!"

"Hikaru!" - the door to the music room cracked open, revealing a blonde head. "Is that you?!"

Kaoru buried her face in her hands.

"YOU'RE LATE! I explicitly told everyone to show up right after class today! We have a lot to get through -"

"I'm sorry, Boss," said Hikaru, pulling on a thin, nonchalant smile to hide the fact that this was, without a doubt, the worst of all possible moments for Tamaki to appear. "I was just… uh… trying to recruit a new member."

"Trying seems to be the operative word." Kyoya's head materialized just above Tamaki's, and the Shadow King adjusted his glasses to get a better look at Kaoru. "Is that your twin, Hikaru? Kaoru, I believe?"

"Uh… yeah…"

"And may I ask why you decided that making a potential member cry would be a good recruitment tactic?"

"Wait a minute," Tamaki interjected, "THAT's Kaoru? But I thought -" His mouth fell indelicately open, and his eyes ranged fruitlessly up and down Kaoru's uniform in seeming hope of latching onto something - anything - that would explain the contradiction that had shaken the very core of his being.

Kaoru, by then, had given up all pretense of stifling her sobs, and was wailing so violently it echoed halfway down the hallway, even as Hikaru's expression grew increasingly constipated.

"Well, look, uh - Kaoru," Tamaki said at last, "Maybe you'd better come inside. If you keep crying like that in the hallway, people are going to think something's up."

He threw open the door and gestured at her to come in. Having turned beet-red, Kaoru obeyed, still sobbing spasmodically and hiccuping every few seconds - and Hikaru followed close at her heels.

Before they had crossed the threshold, however, another blonde-haired being appeared before them - a boy who looked a good deal younger than anyone present, and hugged a large stuffed bunny.

"Oh, no! Kao-chan, is that you?" he cried. "Are you okay?!"

"K-kao... CHAN? How do you know my name?" Kaoru whimpered, pressing her thighs together as if the bizarre creature had been the straw that broke her already put-upon psyche.

"Oh!" The boy's eyes shot downward, and he froze in momentary consternation. "I - I just do!" He beamed an extra-wide smile and shoved his bunny smack into Kaoru's face."Here, do you want to hold Usa-chan?"

Minutes later, Kaoru was seated on a red-upholstered couch, covered in a bunny blanket, and hanging on to Usa-chan for dear life. A cup of tea stood before her, but she had not touched it, and five concerned-looking boys had crowded around her.


	17. The Door Kaoru Opened

"Hika-chan, maybe you should apologize to Kao-chan," said Honey. "Whatever happened, you're twins, after all - and twins shouldn't fight."

Ten minutes had passed, and Kaoru had made no progress in regaining coherence, despite earnest efforts on the part of the hosts to find out what had upset her.

"Yeah." Tamaki tapped his foot testily. "And while you're at it, it would be great if you could explain why you felt the need to lie to us and tell us Kaoru was your sister."

"Tamaki, Kaoru IS his sister," said Kyouya. Having fetched his laptop, he was clicking through a spreadsheet while keeping one eye on the proceedings. "According to school records, anyway."

"What?! Then why -? I mean - then what's with the uniform?" Tamaki gestured violent in the direction of Kaoru, who broke into a fresh volley of tears right on cue. "And why do they look exactly the same?! That doesn't happen, does it? Not with twins of the opposite sex! We learned about this: twins of the opposite sex look no more and no less similar than your average brother and sister because they're FRATERNAL and not identical! -"

"That I can't say," said Kyouya.

Hikaru was seated in the chair facing at right angles to Kaoru's, and had buried his face in his hands. Tamaki pursed his lips and folded his arms across his chest, casting a critical eye from one twin to the other.

"Well, alright, be that as it may," he said, softening, "We open in a few minutes, and we need to decide what to do." He surveyed both twins once more, and then his face lit up the way it commonly did when he was struck by a particularly madcap idea.

"I've got it!" he cried. "Kaoru can sit with Hikaru while he hosts. Girls love crying boys, don't they?"

"Yes, crying boys," said Kyouya. "Not boys who appear, by all accounts, to be going through a major life crisis."

"You know, you could stop talking about Kaoru like she's not even here." Hikaru looked up from his hands with a sour expression. "And yes, she's a she," he added. "That much I can vouch for."

Kaoru gave what sounded like an affirmative hiccup, and Tamaki turned to look at her. Her eyes still refused, quite emphatically, to even come close to intersecting with Hikaru's, but she had grown quieter and had even allowed Honey, who had pulled up a footstool, to hold her hand. Come to think of it, now that Tamaki looked more closely, her shoulders did not fill her blazer in quite the same the way as Hikaru's did, and her jawline was just a wee bit softer.

"Princess, I am terribly sorry," Tamaki said, crossing the space between them and going down on one knee so they were at eye level. "I've been very rude." He took Kaoru's hand gently away from Honey's. "Tell me, what do YOU want to do right now?"

…

Kaoru sat in the dressing room, surrounded by racks of costumes.

She had not had an answer for Tamaki, but the boys had surmised that she needed space from her brother. And so it was that she had been moved - together with her red upholstered chair and her teacup - into a side-room that housed enough costumes to clothe a large theatre troupe. After that, she could not be sure how much time had passed. There was no way to tell except by the steam from her teacup, but even that had petered out, and the room seemed to be blessed with enough sound isolation to muffle an avalanche. All she knew was that by the time her tears had dried up, all feeling seemed to have gone with them.

Ever since Hikaru had come into her life, things had been happening to her and all she had been able do was push back. That is to say, what little choice she had only applied to trivial things. At most, she had the power to say no, but even then it usually made no sense to do so. And while she had always loved the notion of chance grabbing her by the wrist and whisking her away to parts unknown, somehow she never thought that fate could give as easily as it could take away. More than that, she had never thought about the contradiction Hikaru voiced less than an hour ago. If she liked random chance, it was only the random chance she had had a hand in generating - and these last few weeks, she had been borne along by the current, her strength just enough to keep her head above water on a good day. And Hikaru…Well, Hikaru was about as refreshing as a wrecking ball sometimes, and it was probably too late to try and change that. And yet, brother or boyfriend, there would be no avoiding him from now on. He was an irredeemable idiot, to be sure, but there was no way around him. He was like a giant pile of rancid, rotting lemons in the middle of the road that you could not drive over or around without falling into the ditch. And everyone knows what they say about lemons.

She sighed and stood up. The being that looked back at her from the mirror on the wall was still someone she barely recognized, especially with the puffy eyes and the nose that glowed. But the uniform still squared her shoulders the way it had the day before, and still raced down her torso in clean, graceful lines. Both men and women had stared at her all day? She could see why. The lapels, the brass buttons, the darts down the back that tapered at the waist - it was all so sleek, so expensive, to die for. It was the sort of jacket that made your very cheekbones sit a little higher and your hair fall in a slightly more devil-may-care attitude, and when you saw yourself in a mirror it made you stand, unwittingly and unwillingly, as if you were the kind of person who ate others like you for breakfast. It even made her - a gangly, complex-ridden teenager - look like she was anything but off the rack.

She turned and walked over to the sink in the corner of the room, and turned on the water, testing it with her finger. Once it ran as cold as she wanted, she dabbed it under her eyes and on her wrists. Ame did not known why the latter worked, but it did, like magic. When she came back to the mirror, the swelling around her eyes had gone down, and when she raised her chin and turned her head this way and that, the being in the mirror looked back with a new, glossy coolness.

Kaoru smiled and struck a pose in a three quarters, folding her hands into the silhouette of a gun.

"My name is Kaoru Hitachiin," she said to her reflection, her lips curving farther skyward. "I am young, rich, and very, very bored. Let's play."

…

When Kaoru emerged from the dressing room, the guests at the tables closest to the door noticed her almost directly, sending ripples of nudges and winks across the room. But Kaoru hardly noticed any of it; rather, she zeroed in quickly on her target, who was half-lounging on a couch across the room with a girl on each side. Swallowing a small wave of annoyance, she blinked and proceeded across the room without a second look. Hikaru, oddly enough, was the last to catch sight of her, but when he did he shot up like he had been electrocuted.

"Kaoru -" he breathed, but the sound evaporated before it passed his lips.

"Hello, brother," said Kaoru, a small smile dancing on her lips. "I'm sorry for the interruption, princesses," she added, turning to the girls. She thought she recognized one of them from her and Hikaru's class, but could not be sure, so she left it at that.

"No, no, it's alright, we don't mind," said the girl Kaoru recognized, reaching to put down her teacup even as her companion remained frozen with her teaspoon halfway to her mouth.

"You don't mind?" Kaoru cocked an eyebrow at the guest. "Well, good, because my brother and I have something we need to sort out, and I'm afraid it can't wait until later."

The girls did not answer, but judging by their looks they were very anxious to know what the brothers had to settle, so Kaoru turned back to her twin.

"Hikaru," she said, drawing a mental curtain between them and the girls, and lowering her voice just enough to make it smolder. "I'm happy to let you take charge when it's just the two of us, but you crossed a line last time."

"I'm… sorry, Kaoru," whispered Hikaru. She could not be sure that he had caught on to what she was doing - in truth, he seemed far too much like a prisoner pardoned from death row to catch on to much of anything, so she took a step toward him and took his hand, raising it halfway to her lips.

"NEVER do that again," she said, bending her knees slightly and drawing closer until their profiles looked like a vase might have fit between them. "ALWAYS ask me first."

She waited, locking eyes with him, and, slowly, very slowly, his features began to change from an expression of shock, to one of genuine incredulity, to one of hesitant wonder and reverence that she hoped would amount to something like understanding. And the hope did not have long to wait, as she felt a hand on the small of her back and Hikaru drew her closer to him. He smiled, and - if she did not know better, she could have sworn he had grew a touch misty-eyed.

"Kaoru," he breathed again. "I - I'm so sorry." He reached to smooth a lock of hair from her forehead and a shiver ran up his hand. "I was so… worried. I thought with the way I behaved it would be over for sure. And yet… here you are." He smiled like a child and wrapped his hand around hers. Letting go of the small of her back, he took her chin with his three fingers. "I am not worthy of being your brother."

That RAT. She had not wanted to forgive him. Not just yet. Anyway, it would take time, and now that he had done the chin thing she could no longer be sure he wasn't trying to manipulate her. But even so, a warm trickle was already making its way down her spine as her thoughts traveled back to the hospital room, the day he had given her his button and -

NO.

He had accepted her, sure, just as she was, but the day's events had shown that he still did not in fact understand - had not even tried to understand - the half of it, and suddenly Kaoru felt so angry she could have cried.

Hikaru seemed to sense her trouble and raised her chin a little higher, even as she struggled tried to look away and blinked hard to keep the tears from pooling.

"Kaoru, I will never… disrespect you like that again." His eyes caressed hers, and she hesitated. On the one hand, the words sounded like something out of a performance, but his look had something of a familiar desperation about it, as if he was a child witnessing something he did could not even name, but would have done everything in his power to stop it if he could. Though she still did not like it and did not know whether to believe it, Kaoru was suddenly disarmed, and a moment was all it took. He cupped her jaw in both his hands and pulled her face to his, pressing his lips tightly first on the right eyelid and then the left.

And it was just as well, because if he had not, the tears would have overflowed for sure, and she would have been lucky to keep from breaking down.

"Hikaru," she gasped, her free hand rising to his waist almost on its own accord.

But the kisses had done their work, and she no longer wanted to cry, and felt very warm, as if a blush redder than the brightest host club decor was flooding her cheeks.

"Kaoru, please… forgive me. I won't know how to live with myself if I can't earn your forgiveness." His lips were still all but brushing her face, and his cologne - cologne? yes, cologne; she had been too far gone to notice it all day - was a warm amber, and she knew, right then, that she wanted to. She so, so wanted to.

"Of course, Hikaru," she whispered, barely above a breath. "Of course."

…

"Kaoru, you MUST stay and be a host!"

"Yes, Kaoru, please, you must!"

Hikaru's guests, whose names were Yuki and Emiko, had nearly had an apoplexy apiece - as did Tamaki and the rest of the clubroom at the sight of the scene between the twins. But a half an hour had passed and all sufferers had recovered quite nicely and it was back to business as usual, with Hikaru and Kaoru sitting on the couch, smiling and holding hands as the girls studied the two of them with an interest that would have earned them top marks were the twins an academic subject.

"I'm considering it," said Kaoru, prying her fingers apart from Hikaru's and reaching to top off Emiko's cup. "That is" - she added, sending a bit of warmth in the girl's direction from under half-closed eyelids - "If my brother is true to his word and doesn't end up soiling the rug like he always does."

"Hikaru!" - both girls exclaimed - "You must be nice to your brother! Otherwise we won't request you anymore!"

"What was it that you did to him, anyway?" Emiko - the twins' classmate - demanded, folding her arms and pursing her well-shaped mouth into a pout.

"Yes," Yuki echoed, accepting another cup of tea from Kaoru. "I cannot imagine how anyone could NOT be nice to Kaoru" - she glanced up furtively at the younger twin, who returned a soft smile without missing a beat.

"Yeah - he's got a cast on, for goodness' sake. Looks like you're more of a little devil than we thought."

From the moment they had broken their embrace and the room had exploded in a hubbub to rival the second coming, Hikaru had been a trifle less bold at speaking than he usually was, and had continued to look at Kaoru as if she were made of venetian glass and everything else was chattel. Indeed, the girls' good-natured disapproval might have gone unacknowledged altogether had Kaoru not responded for in his stead.

"What he did, my princesses, is classified," she said with a tilt of the head and a curl of the lip to better accentuate the dimple in her cheek. She let her gaze slip over Yuki's hand, then over her delicate forearm, and finally all the way up to her face - which, she noted, was rather pretty, the skin giving off a powdery sheen as if dusted with ground pearl. "As much as I'd love to tell you, it is a very private matter, and I never kiss and tell."

She glanced back at Hikaru with hooded eyes, and let her fingers skirt over his knuckles as she leaned back and placed one leg over the other. Glancing back at Yuki, she tried to let herself imagine, for a moment, what it might have been like to touch that skin, too, in a way that warranted a gentleman's silence. While she had never liked girls, she had to own that the idea, at least for a once off, was very nice. And it seemed the sensation had reflected on her face, for Yuki suddenly became very interested in the hem of her dress, and when she glanced up again, her face glowed as if Kaoru had looked at her the way every girl wanted to be regarded.

Oh, dear - Kaoru thought - I'm going to hell for this, aren't I?

But it was just as well. Because for the first time in weeks, something of the old Kaoru had begun to stir in her chest. The same Kaoru who pretended that the ocean was knee-deep, and who had stolen a field striper to painted runes into the field for kicks, and showed up to school in cosplay only to grin like a fool when marched to the principal's office.

Kaoru let the cultivated smile of the lover spread into a sunny grin, and extended an arm over Hikaru's shoulder, lavishing her brother with a look to rival the one she had given Yuki.

"I'd much rather tell you princesses about some of my antics at my old school," she said. "As a matter of fact, my nickname there was 'Little Devil' too. How's that for a coincidence?"

…

"You really should consider it, Kaoru. You've barely been here an hour, and I've already gotten a record number of requests for Hikaru - assuming you'll be staying and joining him permanently." Kyouya looked up from his laptop and his glasses caught a fleck of sun from the tall windows. "You're sure to be very popular, and it's an excellent way to meet people as a new student."

The host club had wrapped up its activities for the day, and Hikaru was bussing the remnants of a dozen parallel tea parties as the rest of the members gathered to check in on his sister.

"Whatever his flaws," Kyouya added, fixing his gaze on a Kaoru who looked to be in far better spirits, "Your brother seems to be onto something. The incestuous twin scheme really does sell."

"Alright, well, maybe I will," Kaoru replied, studying the laptop curiously. To the extent that she had interacted with Kyouya, the pineapple-encrusted thing seemed to be an extension of his body: he refused to part with it even while hosting, yet somehow still managed to appear as present as could be. "But, see…"

Kyouya raised his eyebrows.

"But - but what?!" Tamaki interjected, "Because if it's the fact that you're a girl, then yes, I can see how it might be a LITTLE bit of a problem, but I'm sure we can set up a separate dressing room -"

Now that she was feeling better, Kaoru could not help but own that when it came to resembling a yellow lab who had failed out of obedience school, her brother had nothing on a certain Tamaki Suoh.

"No, that's not it." Kaoru made a brave attempt to smile as she looked up at the knot of boys in front of her. Needless to say, she was not used to this sort of attention. The "princesses" were one thing - they were girls, and far less threatening, and for an entire hour, they had eaten up her every word as she spun stories about herself, both true and not, with Hikaru bobbing his head in stolid affirmation. It had almost been enough to make her forget just how helpless and exposed she had felt all day. But now that she faced THEM again, the feeling was back, and with a vengeance.

Hikaru, his task done, appeared at her elbow and cast a quizzical look the group.

"Kao-chan was just about to tell us why she's having second thoughts about the host club," Honey informed him. "Though to be honest I really do hope she decides to stay."

Kaoru sighed.

The truth was, everyone KNEW. From Yuzuha, who knew her birthday and where she came from fifteen minutes after they met, to the school administrators, to the small boy, Honey, who knew her name (well enough, apparently, to append "chan") and to the bespectacled cyborg boy, Kyouya, who somehow had access to the class rolls and knew she was a girl before he ever laid eyes on her. And Hikaru, who knew her a little better, took it one step further and presumed to know what she had wanted. Indeed, it seemed like everyone knew something about her - or thought they did, and it was high time to put a stop to it.

"Well, the truth is, I'm not really a girl."

"Ah-HA, I KNEW IT!" Tamaki gave a triumphant cry.

Kaoru folded her lips into an indulgent smile.

"And I'm not really a boy, either. I'm both. Or neither. In fact, I'm not quite sure what I am."

The afternoon sun had begun to slant through the tall windows, and flecks of dust filled the air like tiny white bees.

Tamaki's mouth fell open and for a second it looked like the flesh was about to melt off his face.

"W-what do you mean?" he stammered.

"Well, I have a… condition. It's a testosterone deficiency. I was supposed to be a boy - genetically anyway. But I did not develop properly in the womb, and when I was born there was no way to tell, so I was raised as a girl and I only found out a few weeks ago."

As she spoke, Kaoru had begun to feel like she was observing the scene from above, floating close enough to the ceiling to touch the ornate molding. She had never explained it to anyone before, not in so many words, and to hear the sentences form so smoothly was strange to say the least.

"I suspected it might be something like that," said Kyouya, catching another sun-fleck with his glasses.

A-and, so much for that.

Kaoru could not see Hikaru, but even without him shedding a pale silhouette on the floor she was glad of his presence at her elbow.

"5-alpha reductase deficiency, right?"

"Y-yes."

"No fair, you looked that up!" Tamaki exclaimed, popping over his friend's shoulder.

"Which is more than you did," replied Kyouya coolly. "Considering there's Wifi everywhere in this building, and devices to make use of it are more than available to someone of your means, I would hardly call that unfair." He turned back to Kaoru. "So what exactly is your concern when it comes to the club?"

For once his glasses did not catch the light in a way that obscured his eyes, and Kaoru found herself unsure - still - of what to make of him. It was hard to tell if the slightly stiff way in which he held his neck and they he turned his head and raised an eyebrow was something universal, or whether he really did take an interest in her predicament enough to take both eyes off his laptop. But either way, the aspect in question made for a perfect blank slate, and Kaoru found words forming on her tongue on almost their own accord.

"Well, the thing is," she said, "If I were to join the host club, wouldn't that unambiguously peg me as a boy in everyone's eyes?"

"Yes, I suppose it might."

"Well, see, I'm not sure that's right - to tell people something definitively when I'm still in limbo myself."

"But haven't you already done that? By wearing a blazer?"

Kaoru bit her lip.

"Well, no. The blazer in and of itself is not what I'd call definitive. After all, I haven't told anyone in so many words, and Hikaru has been introducing me as 'my twin' all day. At this point, I could still go the other way and it'll be as if I just happened to have been wearing a blazer and people just… assumed things. But if I were to become a host, it wouldn't be so easy. After all, isn't a host by definition male?"

Kyouya nodded.

"I understand. But the Host Club is a place of entertainment. We give people what they want, but it's not necessarily who we are. Every host's persona is based on actual qualities that they have, but it's ultimately a pretty reductionist portrayal."

Well-well. He was worse that Hikaru. If trying to argue with Hikaru was like hitting a brick wall, Kyouya's skill was making the weapon disappear from your hand altogether.

"Also," he added, "As you might have noticed, we cosplay here routinely, and that includes crossdressing."

"Yes," Tamaki chimed in, snapping out of studying Kaoru with an intensity that might have bored through her insides, "We crossdress every Tuesday, and on Wednesdays we wear pink."

"Right, okay," said Kaoru with a chuckle. Indeed, there had been a few prominent ball gowns in the dressing room flotsam, though she had been far too distraught to pay them much mind. "But I still feel like there's a difference. Everyone probably expects you to cosplay, but there's a fine line between a 24-7 cosplay and a lie."

"Ah." Kyouya blinked his eyes slowly. "And you're feel that line is… expectation? Whether people know it's cosplay? Because personally, I'd find myself hard-pressed to call something a lie if even I did not know what the truth was."

Ah, so he was a relativist. Somehow, Kaoru found herself unsurprised.

"Well, alright. But you guys have a reference point. You know who and what you are. If you cosplay as the other gender, it does not change much, whereas for me -"

"Your center is still volatile, yes." Kyouya removed his glasses and extracted a purple-hemmed handkerchief from his front pocket to wipe the lenses. "And yes, you won't be able to equivocate forever - you will have to take a definitive stance eventually." He put his glasses back on and fixed his eyes, unblinking, on Kaoru. "And yes, gender matters. For better or for worse, people react to you differently depending on what gender they think you are. But I think that the host club can be a safe arena for exploring that difference. Strictly speaking, you're likely to get far more social interaction than you would otherwise, and the obligations are far fewer."

And, there he was again, with the ever-so-persuasive, matter-of-fact, perfectly un-pushy sales tactics. Kaoru looked down and flicked the flap of her pocket back and forth.

"I don't know," she mused. "I sort of feel like I've been on the receiving end of a lot of things lately - perception included. Sometimes I wish there could be one thing that I could be in control of projecting on other people."

Ah, control. So that's what it came down to. In another other circumstances, Kyouya might have yawned, and the only thing that threw him off was the way she admitted it. As if it was nothing. It was strange to say the least, for usually his knee jerk reaction was to think people rash or not too bright when they laid out their cards on the table that quickly. But with Kaoru neither seemed to be the case. Indeed, it had been a while since he had seen someone so… forthright. No wonder she was concerned about lying to everyone, and together with an otherwise thoughtful demeanor, it made for a combination that almost jarred the senses.

He smiled.

"Well, if that's the case, there's no reason you can't be in control. After all, no one is taking away your right to change your mind. You can simply say that you were living as a male for the purposes of the host club. Some people may be put off, but others will not be. And then you can be the one to say, 'no, I want you to see me as a woman now, and here is why.' But either way, you will have a better chance of people seeing things your way if they know you and like you for another reason."

"Yeah," Honey put in. "Although, if it makes any difference, I think it's perfectly okay to change your mind about your gender no matter what people might say. And it doesn't matter if you already told everyone something else."

"I agree," added Tamaki hastily, breaking eye contact with the cut of Kaoru's blazer around the breast. "After all, you're still figuring yourself out. Just like everyone else."

"Well, I wouldn't quite say that." Kaoru chuckled, the boys' tone alone forcing her lips into a smile. "I mean, I'm fairly sure I'm not a typical case."

Kyouya smiled thinly, his eyes still fixed on Kaoru. "Well, arguably women and men are made, not born. Or so said Simone de Beauvoir."

"Made? What does that -" Kaoru heard Hikaru's voice somewhere at her elbow.

"In other words, it's a process," Kyouya explained. "It means that being a man or a woman is less a matter of biology and more a matter of how you're conditioned to respond to certain situations, the thought patterns you develop, and the burden of expectations you're forced to live with. Which, of course, CAN go back to biology, given that biology is frequently all people think they have to go on when relating a young child, for instance."

"Well" - Kaoru shrugged - "I never felt like a proper woman, no matter how hard I tried, and no matter how much everyone else tried. And maybe there's a reason for that, given what I am... biologically. It's as if society tried to make me into a woman, but somehow it didn't take."

"Didn't it?" Kyouya raised his listening-brow higher. "I'd say if you're this concerned about not whether or not you're a so-called proper woman, then society got the job done."


	18. The New Host

"Kaoru" - the fragile Hapa woman tapped her pen on the edge of the pad and paused, waiting for Kaoru to take her eyes off the potted plant on the shelf behind her. "From what you've been saying, I'm getting the sense that school had been a big source of stress for you, and I'm wondering if you might consider being home-schooled."

"Home-schooled?" Kaoru sat up, her eyes darting back to the woman, whose name was Dr. Kuriyama - a psychiatrist she had chosen after seeing a few others. Dr. Kuriyama was trained in the United States, and ended up diagnosing Kaoru with minor depression.

"Yes, you've been through a lot, and it's going to take time before you feel like yourself again. There's not much we can do about the other things in the short term, but my thought is that if a source of stress can be eliminated with relative ease, then it probably should be. So maybe a break from school would be beneficial."

Kaoru pondered for a moment, letting her eyes drift to the window. The office was on one of the higher floors of a tall building, and all she could see was a crisp, warm sky.

"No, I don't think so," she said. "I mean" - she looked back at the woman, seated like an ageing crane in the chair opposite, her arms and legs folded - "The last time I got to take a break, right after everything happened, it didn't really help much. I just sat there all day alone, marinating with my thoughts. It might be hard to get out of bed every day right about now, but I think I need to be around people and have something to do to keep myself going."

"You won't necessarily need to be alone. You'll have home-based tutors, or, if you're interested, we could get you into a day-program with other kids who are in a hectic place in their lives. There'll be school there, as well as support groups."

"No, please," Kaoru cut the woman short before she could finish, only to look down in immediate apology.

"No, it's alright, Kaoru," the woman said. "What were you going to say?"

"I'm sorry, it's just" - Kaoru paused, her eyes darting back at the sky beyond the windowpane - "All I really want is to feel normal for a while. I want to go to school like everyone else. And I want to be around my brother and his friends."

The woman nodded and put down the pad.

"Alright, Kaoru, it's your choice. But just so you know, that option is there if you change your mind." Sje paused. "Speaking of your brother, how are things going?"

...

Hikaru - his faux pas at the Host Club aside - had been true to his word in at least one thing.

At first, when the maid gave her evening report and said that the twins were studying, Yuzuha had thought it was some kind of trick and that the other woman had fallen for it. So she went to check on them herself, only to discover that it really was true: it was 9 pm, and the two were poring over their books as if they had been going strong for hours, papers and notebooks littering a good fifteen square feet of floor. Indeed, in her incredulity Yuzuha went so far as to tiptoe away and eavesdrop from around the corner - just in case it was all a clever ruse, and the clothes would go flying the moment she turned her back. She stood there for twenty minutes, and went away unsatisfied - because from what she could gather, the twins really were discussing math. More than that, Hikaru was actually explaining something to Kaoru, and very patiently at that, and Kaoru seemed adamant that she arrive at the answer on her own.

Over the years, Hikaru had perfected the art of blitzkrieging through his homework with minimal damage to his grades, but with Kaoru in the picture, however, everything took two or three times longer. Still, if Hikaru was annoyed by it he showed no sign. Rather, he seemed to observe with genuine pride when an hour of back and forth, three cups of tea, and much violent apologizing on Kaoru's part later, their efforts were crowned with success and his sister pieced together a complicated proof. And Kaoru, for her part, had found Hikaru's Achilles heel also. Although her academic background was at best mediocre, she quickly realized that even she was better at writing in the French and English than Hikaru was.

"I don't get it, Hikaru," she had said. "I could've sworn the French teacher loved you."

"She does," Hikaru chuckled, leaning back into something reminiscent of the yogic bridge-pose to stretch his back. "But that's only because she IS French, and I'm the only one who doesn't absolutely butcher the pronunciation - because I had a French au pair and because I watch way too many foreign movies. But the whole spelling thing really is pretty ridiculous. I mean… there are letters, but there are multiple sounds for each letter, and multiple letters for each sound, and ninety-nine percent of the time the word sounds nothing like the individual letters. Tell me that's not crazy."

"Right." Kaoru sniffed, taking a swig of iced tea before resuming her perusal of the week's vocabulary list. "Because the relative distribution of lines in your average Kanji is SO, incredibly informative as to sound and meaning."

"Right, but in Japanese I don't have that expectation." Hikaru popped back up and materialized at her side with a wide grin, propping his chin on her shoulder. "In English and French, they had me at the ABC's. I mean, there's always the HOPE that it'll all make sense, and that's what kills me."

And so the days passed in a whirlwind of school, host club, tutoring, and homework, with every night ending with one or both of them sprawling on the floor laughing maniacally and waxing philosophical in some disturbing way. And bit by bit, the edge came off Kaoru's stress, and she even began to forgive her brother.

…

Kaoru had hardly been in school a week when she got her first love note.

She noticed the envelope stuck in her shoe locker when she was changing into her school loafers, and opened it almost too quickly, more worried than anything else that she had somehow made so much of a splash that someone had something to say to her that they could not be voiced in polite company. The note turned out to be from a girl named Naoko Tatsumaru, who, as far as Kaoru could recall, was in her and Hikaru's class, exquisitely beautiful, and a member of the Queen Bee's clique - even though she hardly ever said anything.

The note, however, was proof enough that despite her taciturn demeanor Miss Tatsumaru had a way with words after all. Indeed, she had filled three pages of expensive, cold-pressed lavender paper with florid descriptions of just how much she had been struck by Kaoru's cultivated, sensible, and considerate qualities, and how much she hoped she could get to know him better as a result.

When Kaoru showed Hikaru the note, he laughed, clapping her on the shoulder.

"What did I tell you, Kaoru? It's official - you're a regulation bishounen in that blazer."

"B-But what do I DO?"

Hikaru shrugged, arranging the sheets back in order and handing them back. "You don't have to do anything. After all, it's only the first of many."

Despite their very public reconciliation scene, it was several days later and Kaoru was only just beginning to warm to him again, and had even gone so far as to let him touch her outside their performances at the host club. But his nonchalance had stirred another seed of annoyance in her chest.

"Well, I think I should acknowledge it somehow." She pursed her lips as she picked his hand off her shoulder with her thumb and index finger. "It does look like she put a lot of work into it."

Hikaru's smile cracked a touch wider. "Well, yeah, but that's just the way she is. Teachers have been yelling at her since second grade about brevity being the soul of wit. I mean, I guess you CAN say something, but to be honest if the hosts ran around letting every girl down easy that popped a note in their box, that's all they would be doing. Unless," - he raised an eyebrow, squinting with a spark in his eye, "You're thinking of leaving your poor brother and going out with Miss Dragon Lady** now that you've gotten a taste of what it's like to be popular with the girls."

("Tatsu" means "dragon.")

Kaoru folded her lips into a small smile.

"Don't be silly, Hikaru" - she said, turning back to her locker. "I might not be certain of my gender, but I'm fairly sure girls are my tenth shot of sake at best."

…

Kaoru ended up passing Miss Tatsumaru a message during History class and asked if she could meet halfway through the period when Hikaru had gym and Kaoru usually checked in with the school psychologist. That day, Kaoru did not have much that troubled her, and hoped to get through the meeting quickly. In the end, she turned out to be right, and made it to the large malachite vase at the end of the second-floor hallway right on time.

Miss Tatsumaru was already waiting for her.

"Miss Tatsumaru?" Kaoru stopped a few paces shy of the girl and bowed her head. It was the first time they had interacted one on one, much less with Kaoru standing up, and for a split second the latter's old insecurity returned when she realized that Miss Tatsumaru was a good head shorter than her.

The girl nodded. "Naoko," she said, dropping her eyes to the floor just as soon as Kaoru noticed that they were an inky shade of blue if not olive-green - thought it might have been a reflection of the vase. With another twinge of regret, Kaoru noticed that the girl's hair was very long, swept up into an elfin half-updo, and just as inky as her eyes. Indeed, her entire aspect reminded Kaoru of a black swan.

"I… got your letter," she said. "And it made me feel wonderful. That a girl like you would call me cultivated and refined was not something I expected."

Miss Tatsumaru's eyes did not leave her shoes, and a bright blush had begun to form on her cheeks.

"But… I'm afraid it might not be a good idea for us to get to know each other the way you want."

Kaoru paused to watch for the other girl's expression, and, sure enough, before long Miss Tatsumaru's lower lip slid under her top one and she bit down on it, hard.

"I… I knew it."

"No, princess…"

"Don't call me princess, please."

"Alright. Naoko, then." Kaoru took a step toward her and put the letter she had been holding in her pocket, just in case it was the reason Naoko looked like she was watching her kith and kin get murdered one by one. "Look, it's not like that. It's just that I don't belong to myself. I'm a host, and I am married to my duty to make every girl happy. We could, of course, get to know each other better, but I do not think you will like that - not with the likes of me."

Naoko looked up from her shoes - a shiny set of pointy-toed loafers of delicate craftsmanship - and bit her lip harder, although her eyes were dry. Kaoru saw that they really did have a bit of green in them, malachite vase notwithstanding.

"I would love to be friends, though," she added.

"Friends?" Naoko's voice had a touch of bitterness, but Kaoru willed herself not to let it faze her.

"Yes, friends."

"How?"

"Oh, you know. We can come over to each other's houses and have tea, and do our nails, and braid each other's hair. You know, like friends do." She smiled.

Naoko blinked her eyes several times and they sparkled like diamonds.

"Well, now you're just being silly."

"No, I'm quite serious. I admit I'm not so great at nails, but I can do a mean fishtail braid. In fact, I can show you."

…

From the standpoint of the club, Kyouya was the mother, and while he did not always like the moniker he shared one notable conviction with mothers the world over. Namely, he did not care what the kids did to amuse themselves as long as they stayed happy and out of trouble. As a consequence, he let the hosts have full creative license when it came to entertaining their guests, and it was only by chance that he grew curious when he saw girl after girl come away from Hikaru and Kaoru with hair in a style different from the one she came with. Indeed, the lineup was so colorful and varied it was hard not to notice, seeing how it ranged from the chunky crown braids gracing the reddish locks of the prime minister's niece, to the French braids that complemented the childlike features of an airline heiress quite nicely, to a stiff, geisha-style updo that resembled the prow of a ship and sat atop the head of the daughter of a famous actress.

When the tenth girl in a row walked away beaming and patting what Kyouya could only guess might have been termed a waterfall braid, he decided to have a look, and the scene that met his eyes was not for the faint-hearted.

Kaoru was sitting behind her guest, a girl Kyouya recognized as Momoka Kurakano, vice-representative of class 1-A, and was just in the middle of linking two braids that began at either temple to form a thicker braid in the back. Hikaru was standing in front of the duo, and held up a mirror as he smiled cheek to cheek.

"If I may say so, you look beautiful, Miss Kurakano," Hikaru was saying.

"Yes, a hairstyle fit for a princess - or at least that's the hope," Kaoru said, deftly fixing all three strands hair in place as she reached for something on the pouf next to her. "Assuming my craft can equal your beauty."

"Kaoru, I still can't believe it. Where on earth did you learn to braid like that?" asked the twins' other guest, a regular named Emiko Matsubara.

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Kaoru resumed her work, having fixed some loose hairs in place with a series of bobby pins. "Until recently, my hair was longer than Miss Tatsumaru's. In fact, I could sit on it. But you know, after a while it gets to be very hot - AND I played basketball. So I had no choice - it was either this or snip-snip. But then a certain someone who shall remain nameless burned it all off on accident."

"Wow, that's impressive," said Emiko, "A-and I'm really sorry. But…" She flicked her tongue over her lips and pulled her skirt tighter over her thighs. "Didn't anyone ever mistake you for a girl?"

"Oh, all the time. But I didn't mind."

"Kaoru's always liked coloring outside the lines." Hikaru nodded earnestly, adjusting the mirror. "I think that much's been established."

"Precisely, Hikaru." Kaoru nodded, reaching for an elastic. "I even failed preschool. On principle."

"Well, I think a man who's secure enough in himself to adopt feminine characteristics is a very attractive thing," said Miss Kurakano, turning her head to get a better look at the braids running down the sides of her head.

"You hear that, Hikaru?" Kaoru smoothed a loose strand of hair behind Miss Kurakano's ear, brushing her temple delicately with her finger. "Miss Kurakano thinks men with feminine characteristics are attractive. Now, Miss Kurakano, would you say that's something MANY women admire, or is this a personal preference?"

"Well." Miss Kurakano grew momentarily flustered. "I do think many women like it, at least to an extent. Otherwise there wouldn't have been the 'real men wear pink' movement."

"Well, I would certainly wear pink is that's the case," Hikaru declared. "But only if Kaoru did it with me."

"Ok, then how about this -" Kaoru smiled in the mirror, squeezing Miss Kurakano's upper arms and hovering her face over her shoulder. "You circulate a petition, Miss Kurakano, and if we get enough votes, Hikaru and I will both grow our hair out AND dye it pink. Then we can play with your hair and you can play with ours. Wouldn't that be grand?"

Kyouya turned away with a chuckle.

It seemed there was nothing to worry about. Kaoru was getting along splendidly, and along with a Princely type, a Cool type, a Wild type, a Shota type, and a Little Devil type, the host club now had a Possibly-Not-So-Gay Best Friend type.


	19. The Trial

(Merry Christmas to all my readers who celebrate it!)

"Hey, I thought someone said that girls were their tenth shot of sake."

It was Sunday, and the twins were seated over a late breakfast in the morning room with the sound of Noda's shears floating through the open window. Toroko had just filled their third cup apiece of Hikaru's favorite pomegranate white tea and disappeared.

"Hikaru, come on, you know I have confidence problems."

After the letter from Miss Tatsumaru that started it all, the love notes and the thank yous had been coming thick and fast, and Kaoru had taken up framing her dresser mirror with them. But after a few days, she ran out of space and began a bulletin board for the rest. Hikaru had just finished perusing the latest crop of letters and slid them back across the table.

"No, it's okay. They're your letters. You can do whatever you want with them. It's just that -" he took a sip of blood-red concoction from his cup and tented his eyebrows for a mock-wounded look - "I was kind of hoping I would be enough for you. But now you're Mr. Popular Host, and who knows, you might decide you don't need your poor devil brother anymore…"

Kaoru glanced up at her brother, and it really did seem like he was trying very hard to laugh off the sentiment, but only succeeded in looking a whimper and an ear-scratch away from a sad puppy who had forgotten that she loved him.

"No, you are enough for me, Hikaru."

How could she explain, though, that from the day she met him everything, both good and bad, had happened to her because of him, or through him, or somehow by means of being his sister? Once she began to get comfortable at school on her own power, it had felt like a breath of fresh air. But it was hard to say as much without sounding ungrateful.

"Don't get me wrong," she said, "I love being in the host club, and I like making girls happy and making new friends. But none of it would be worth much if you weren't there with me."

She meant it, too. Over the last week Hikaru had taken a back seat to the proceedings so that she could develop relationships in her own right. But she would never have felt the same spring in her step if every time she turned around Hikaru was not there, looking at her like she was the best thing since green tea flavored Kit-Kats.

"So… you're not mad at me anymore for the - you know?" Hikaru asked sheepishly.

"No, I am." Kaoru smiled sweetly. "Or I was. A little. But that's a separate issue." She reached out and touched his hand. "Cheer up, brother. It's going to take a lot more than one episode of presuming to know to lose my goodwill."

It was all Hikaru could do to look at Kaoru with wonder. For the last few days, she had most definitely been punishing him, what with the backhanded snark she disguised so well as affection, and by literally shutting her door in his face a few times. Not that he did not deserve it. But the way she had come alive ever since she had joined the Host Club was not something he could have expected. It was another new Kaoru, to be sure, the tenth or so he had met to date. And despite the yen of guilt at how this particular Kaoru had come to be, she was also the one who made him smile the most.

"Hikaru? Kaoru?"

Yuzuha poked her head into the room, and the rest of her followed, dressed in a silk kimono in pale greyish-green.

"Yeah, mom? We're almost done here."

"No, take your time. I wanted to speak to Kaoru." Yuzuha sat down opposite the girl, and poured herself a cup of tea. "Now, you know how I told you that even though it's technically an adult adoption, since you're under 18 it would have to go through family court, just as a formality?"

Kaoru nodded.

"Well, first of all, don't read too much into this, but I was hoping to have it settled with lawyers doing all the work, but it looks like that might not be able to happen." She took a sip and patted her lips with a napkin. "There have been a few… complications. It looks like there will have to be a hearing with you, and all of us, and your Uncle's family there in person."

"Complications?" Kaoru felt Hikaru's hand find hers under the table.

"Oh, it's nothing big." Yuzuha reached for a pain au chocolat and placed it on her plate, taking up a knife. "You'll just have to come in and answer some questions. It's not a trial, just a hearing. It's just a way to get everyone in the same room and talk things through."

"But… why do we need to do that?" Kaoru stammered. "I thought -"

"Well, as you might imagine." Yuzuha put down the knife. "There's been a lot going on. And with everything that's been happening, everyone might not be on the same page. So it's just a way of clearing the air and communicating what your intentions are."

"Wait." Kaoru squeezed Hikaru's hand under the table. "Are you saying my family is… objecting? Because I talked to my uncle at the funeral, and he said -" She did not want to say as much, but if not for the very minor detail that was Hikaru's being her brother, the conversation with Uncle Kenji would have sounded an awful lot like he was giving them his blessing.

Yuzuha took a slow breath, her breast riding a good five inches up and down.

"That's not the issue," she said. "It's just that this is a very - unique case." She had begun to slice her pastry, and looked up with a slightly apologetic look at Kaoru. "There are lots of ins and outs, and that's simply the rule - that you have to show up and make a statement for both lawyers, so that the story is consistent." She paused, popping a strip of layered dough into her mouth. "It does not need to be very long. They'll simply ask you questions, and as long as you state what you want and are truthful, there shouldn't be a problem."

…

Despite Yuzuha's effort to make the whole thing sound inconsequential, Kaoru still spent the next week on pins and needles. The hearing was scheduled for the following Friday, and although it was not due to begin until 10 o'clock and the twins were excused from school, Kaoru still woke up at six in the morning. She tried to go back to sleep but could not, so to kill the time she laid out several different outfits and tried each one on in turn. She even rolled a nylon thigh-high onto her good leg and picked out color-matched accessories for each outfit. But all but one of the skirts only emphasized her knobbly knees, and the accessories drew attention to her sharp chin, so she pulled it all of in frustration and stomped off to the bathroom, where she proceeded to take as long a shower as she could and spent fifteen minutes gelling her hair into a bob. She then attempted to outline her eyes with olive and purple shadows from a Chanel pallet. But even after all that, it was only an hour and a half later, so after a few minutes of sitting at her dressing table with her face buried in her forearms, she got up, rolled her shoulders, put on the third blouse and the fourth pencil skirt, and marched down the hall to Hikaru's room.

Hikaru was still fast asleep, the covers bunched up over his middle, and was wearing powder-blue pajamas with a Pikachu pattern.

Kaoru tiptoed into the room and pulled off a bit of cover, sliding underneath and wrapping her arms around her brother.

"Good morning, Hika-chu." She kissed his nose, once for each of a smattering of freckles.

Hikaru mumbled sleepily and his eyelids drifted apart. "Kaoru." He smiled blissfully. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Objection." Kaoru slid her hand down. "The defendant's statements and his actions contradict each other."

Hikaru smiled again, and extended his arms to pull Kaoru into a tighter hug, entwining his legs with hers.

"Ooh, are those nylons?" he said, yawning pleasantly. "You saucy little minx."

"One nylon." She rubbed his back. "Alright. Time to get up and go say 'Hika-chu, I choose you'."

"Mhm, five more minutes," he whispered, brushing his fingers against Kaoru's where they rested nead his waistband.

…

Yuzuha had been right when it came to one thing. Kaoru's time on the stand really was brief - not that it helped her feel any less dizzy when she left it. She was asked, just as predicted, to state what her wishes were and why, and she had said - as she had resolved after her week's reflection - that she wanted to be with her brother. It was not the only benefit of living with the Hitachiins, but the others were obvious - and embarrassing. Kaoru hated to admit it, but the phrase "these damn rich people" was crossing her mind less and less often. What's more, it had not taken long to get used to going to school in a place that looked like a European palace and had a university attached where she would end up if she did everything right. And it was even easier to get used to wearing things that looked like expert tailors had pored over every stitch, and to having plenty of space and eating things with far more flavors than what first met the tongue. And, more than that, from the distinctly uncomfortable look of Uncle Kenji and the puffed-up aspect of his wife in her best hat, Kaoru had a sneaking suspicion that aunt Mitsuko could not wait to turn her into a household slave in retribution for what happened at the funeral. But none of those were things one said in polite company, so Kaoru opted for the argument of blood and twin psychology, and the other side hardly bothered to cross-examine her.

The problem was that that was hardly the end of it. Indeed, it did not take Kaoru long to figure out that what was being questioned was not so much the consistency of the facts, but her very sanity. She felt the first alarm-bell go off when the doctor she talked to in the hospital - the woman with the multiple rings who melted into the walls - was called to the stand. And after her came Dr. Kuriyama, as well as the attending from the acute trauma wing, and the school psychologist from Ouran. As a result, Kaoru spent a good three hours feeling like the hairs on her head were growing grey one by one. But thankfully, everyone stuck staunchly to professional ethics and refused to disclose anything that was not known already - namely that yes, Kaoru had attempted to take her life, and had afterwards sought professional help to deal with the grief and stress of a major transition. But depending on how the questions were asked, the doctors seemed to reach different conclusions. On the one hand, they insisted that Kaoru's state was no more and no less than what might be expected in such a situation. On the other, they conceded that recent events could have made it difficult to think rationally and with enough foresight. The most hopeful thing agreed on was that AT THIS POINT more change was not the best thing for Kaoru.

And while the Hitachiin side countered with a string of glowing testimony to the family's character, another surprise came when Uncle Kenji's lawyer got up and said,

"I'd like to call to the stand a Miss Toroko Fujiwara, expert in the psychology of the parties involved."

Kaoru instantly felt her breakfast knock against the back of her throat.

"Expert in… psychology?" she whispered to Hikaru, who sat beside her and had not moved, his elbows on the table and his chin propped up on his hands.

"She's got a college degree in psychology, yes," he replied, his eyes fixed on the empty witness stand. "Though she obviously hasn't been using it much."

"Objection!" - countered Yuzuha's lawyer. "That is not a professional qualification. She is currently employed as a maid in the Hitachiins' service."

"Yes, and as such she is very well acquainted with both siblings, and with the family," the other lawyer said.

"I'll allow it," said the judge.

Toroko rose from the audience and walked to the stand, and Kaoru barely recognized her without her uniform. Instead, Toroko wore a red skirt and black-lacquered heels, and looked five years older with her hair slicked behind her ears.

"State your name for the record."

"Toroko Fujiwara."

"And your occupation?"

"Maid."

"How long have you been working for the Hitachiins?"

"Four years."

"As I understand you have been taking care of Miss Kaoru Suzumiya while she was staying at their home?"

"That is correct."

"And what does this entail?"

"Oh, well, in our business a maid is a sort of lifestyle manager. I manage her meals, I am there for her when she wakes up in the morning, I manage her schedule and appointments, and I help her with her wardrobe. Whatever she needs, I help her with."

"So you see quite a bit of her every day."

"You might say that, yes."

"Can you tell us if anything unusual happened in the days before Miss Suzumiya attempted to take her life?"

"Objection! Vague questioning."

"Overruled."

"Anything, Miss Fujiwara. Anything at all. Based on her own and the family's testimony, Miss Suzumiya has been nothing but happy from the moment she arrived at the Hitachiins'. It seems the suicide attempt was very - sudden."

"Objection. Leading the witness."

"Sustained."

"Sir, you are mistaken if you think I am on intimate terms with Miss Kaoru. I am simply an employee."

"Alright." Uncle Kenji's lawyer pressed his lips and paced the distance between the Suzumiya camp. For a moment, there was no sound except the flutter of the banner behind the judge and the footfalls. Kaoru noticed Uncle Kenji's lawyer was a rather thin man, except for a portly belly. "Miss Kaoru made an attempt at five o'clock in the morning on Sunday the second of April," he said. "Can you tell us, from the beginning, what happened on Saturday the first?"

"Well." Toroko paused. "I came to wake her in the morning like I usually do, at eleven. I knocked twice before she answered, and when I came in, she looked somewhat… nervous, and was stripping the sheets off the bed. I told her that she did not need to do that, and…" Toroko looked down, hesitating, and raised a hand halfway to her eyes.

"Yes, please continue. You said she did not need to do that."

Toroko looked back up and swallowed, the muscles of her throat gliding deliberately up and down.

"She said it was a - lady problem that came on quite suddenly. I offered to help her with that, but she said no. So I took the sheets to be washed and left. But… I suppose there was one thing about it that was a little bit suspicious - though I did not find it suspicious at the time."

"And what was that?"

"It was… just sheets."

"Just sheets?" the lawyer repeated, raising his eyebrows. "And why did that strike you as strange?"

"Well, Miss Kaoru sleeps in pajamas."

"She sleeps in pajamas? You know this for a fact? Have you seen her sleep in pajamas?"

"Well, yes."

"Is it possible that night may have been an exception?"

"I… suppose it's possible."

"But you found it suspicious."

"Objection - leading again."

"Sustained."

"But you found it unusual."

"Yes, I did."

"Why?"

"Well, I would not have thought anything of it, except now I remember - I did bump into her brother in the hallway outside her room later that morning, and he was wearing the same clothes he had worn the previous day, and his hair was wet."

Someone in the audience gasped.

The ringing that had been building in Kaoru's ears grew rapidly in volume.

"I see. And at what time would you say this happened?"

"It could not have been more than twenty minutes later - so, eleven-twenty five or eleven-thirty."

"And what do you think the significance of that is, Miss Fujiwara?"

Toroko paused, swallowing again as if she had a very large, old piece of gum she wanted rid of.

"Well, I HAD been observing that Miss Kaoru and her brother had become friends uncommonly quickly," she said, haltingly. "But I never would have guessed there was anything more than that. Frankly, I might not have wanted to think about it and tried to repress it, hence it did not occur to me until now."

"What didn't occur to you until now?"

"That they had… THAT kind of relationship."

The lawyer paced the floor up and down one more time, his hands clasped behind his back. Kaoru was not sure what was still keeping her upright, and her ears were now roaring. Suddenly, it felt like the distance between her and the judge's podium was a thousand miles, and her head weighed a million pounds and was imploding.

"So tell me if I understand correctly, Miss Fujiwara. Are you saying that you believe Miss Kaoru and her brother are in an incestuous relationship?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Miss Fujiwara. No more questions. Ladies and gentlemen" - the lawyer turned to the audience - "Whatever Miss Suzumiya's reasons for wishing to stay with her brother are" - he paused significantly, avoiding eye contact with the Hitachiin camp - "If such things are allowed to happen, that speaks to one of two things: insufficient supervision, or questionable morals. Either way, I urge the court to reconsider whether the Hitachiins' home is best place for Miss Suzumiya after all."

Kaoru buried her face in her hands.

…

"How on earth could you let this happen? Aren't you supposed to pre-examine all the witnesses?! What kind of a lawyer are you?! " The Hitachiins' attorney had had a good sense to call a recess - given the late hour, it would be a weekend-long one - and Yuzuha was beside herself.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," replied the lawyer, stiff-lipped as a man quite used to his status of henpecked employee. "But it's not all bad news. Because the fact of the matter is, we grilled Miss Fujiwara for hours beforehand, and this whole situation with the lady problem and how she found it odd is - well, for lack of a better word, that's all new. Not to mention the part about Hikaru - though that can be easily checked on security cameras. That she could have 'suddenly' realized something like that, or 'repressed' the memory is highly suspicious. I think it's more than possible to discredit her, but we must take some time and proceed with caution."

"Alright, Kanagawa," said Yuzuha, her knuckles white against her handbag. "You do that. But, fair warning - you lose me Kaoru, and you'll never work again."

…

Hiromi Kanagawa, Esq. adjusted his bifocals over his nose and looked from from the boy-twin to the girl-twin and then to Yuzuha. Kaoru had been responding in monosyllables ever since the courtroom was adjourned, seemed hardly able to walk without support, and had the general air of having having eaten too many questionable mushrooms, Hikaru was as stricken as if he had watched his entire family's heads smashed, and Yuzuha was still pale and livid. But considering that he dealt in family law, he had seen far worse, and did not allow himself to worry just yet.

"Now," he said, folding his hands - thick, with prominent knuckles - atop the leather binder. His hands were perhaps the only things that gave away his age; otherwise, he was still a very young-looking man, with hair almost too long for his station in life. The four of them were back in Yuzuha's study, and the sun was setting and casting filigreed patterns through the stained glass rim of the bay window. "First of all, I need to know if what Miss Fujiwara said is true." He cast another look over the trio, but the Hitachiins did not move, and Kaoru only succeeded in looking a little more green around the gills. "I am not going to judge - I simply need to know. Because if we are going to lie about this, it's always best to lie in a way that most resembles the truth."

The lawyer waited, and the gears of the grandfather clock moved several times before Kaoru's her chin moved barely a finger's breadth up and down.

"Is that a yes, Miss Kaoru?"

"Yes," Hikaru said. His hands were poised over Kaoru's shoulders as she sat in the leather-upholstered chair, her knees together and her feet splayed and pigeon-toed like a child's.

"Alright, then." The lawyer reopened his file. "That makes our job a little easier. Now, my next question is: is there any reason - any reason at all - why you would suspect Toroko Fujiwara would turn against the family? Might she have some… grievances?"

"Well, that's just the thing," Yuzuha spoke up, her voice a touch less clipped than it had been. "I have been raking my brain, and I can not think of anything. She has been nothing but a model employee. We've never had any trouble, we pay her well, and I have no reason to believe we've ever treated her unfairly."

"The Suzumiyas could not have offered her a bribe?" said Kanagawa.

Yuzuha shook her head. "No, I don't think so. Suzumiya Corp. is a small-time artisanal perfume manufacturer."

Hikaru rubbed Kaoru's neck a little more earnestly, forcing a smile. "You know, that's funny," he said. "Seeing how your name's Kaoru." **

(**Kaoru means fragrance.)

"Yeah," replied Kaoru, her voice mirthless. "Why do you think they named me Kaoru in the first place?"

"Anyway," said Yuzuha. "On top of the legal fees, I doubt they would have the means to make it worth her while - and the bigger question is, why? As I understand" - her eyes glanced over Kaoru, chewing the inside of her lip - "The family is not exactly close. The possibility of Kaoru living with them was never even raised. Although, you never know. All things considered, I can see they might have grown concerned."

"No, you're right," said Kaoru, her tone sepulchral. She was beginning to come marginally alive by dint of Hikaru's rubbing, though her face still looked ashen. "They don't like me. They never approved of my parents taking me in."

"Oh." Yuzuha paused, her fingers molded around the file she had begun to flip through. "I'm sorry. I - didn't know that, Kaoru."

"It's okay."

Kanagawa's phone rang, and he excused himself to take the call. Almost as soon as soon as the door clicked shut, a tear slid down Kaoru's cheek and her shoulders buckled - and Hikaru he was in front of her like a shot, half kneeling and kissing her hands and cheeks again and again.

"Oh, Kaoru… Please, please don't cry. We won't let them take you away, I promise."

Yuzuha sighed, her eyes sweeping an expansive trajectory over the ceiling, but Hikaru did not stop until the lawyer returned, clearing his throat and shuffling his feet as he stowed his phone like he were still unused to a wireless device.

"Well, it's just as I thought. There's been a communique from the enemy camp," he said.

"Oh?" Yuzuha raised an eyebrow, her face the picture-perfect audition for grace under pressure monthly. Hikaru froze where he was, Kaoru's hands between his.

"To put it bluntly," said Kanagawa, "They are causing trouble on purpose. But for a cash settlement they will call off the damning evidence."

"A cash settlement." The mercury in Yuzuha's voice fell fifty degrees.

"That's right. Under the table, obviously."

"So wait, are they… trying to SELL Kaoru to us?" said Hikaru.

"Well, I would not put it that way."

"How else would you put it?!"

"Hikaru" - Yuzuha shot a warning look. "Absolutely not," she added, flashing a glance twice as threatening at the lawyer.

"But mom!" Hikaru hesitated for a second, staring down another glare from Yuzuha. "Look, I - I know it's despicable and all, but if that's what it's all about, we can get rid of them pretty easily -"

"Hikaru, if I went around giving in to every rag-tag hanger-on in search of a handout, do you think I would be where I am in life?" Yuzuha's voice was ominously quiet, even as every inch of her had begun to shake - down to her hairdo. She got up from her desk and walked to the window. The sun had disappeared behind the hedges, leaving behind the electric glow of skyline.

Kaoru had spent the last hour wishing she were never born, but it was nothing compared to what she felt when Mr. Kanagawa revealed his discovery, and her despair – blackest of black – was growing by the minute. He did not even need to explain - she understood all too well. Or at least it was not hard to imagine. Suzumiya Perfumes had a long history, but for years it had been making a pittance off tourists and temple commissions. She did not think things were so dire, but then again, it was not impossible that what Suzumiya Perfumes really needed was not an hair but a bailout. And if Kaoru had not been rash and declared – perhaps not in so many words - that she wanted nothing more to do with the family, then they might have come and asked nicely instead of resorting to extortion.

"Very well," said the lawyer. "Then we will have to work on deposing Miss Fujiwara. Are you SURE there is nothing you can think of as to her motive?"

"Uh," Hikaru raised his voice - suddenly uncharacteristically shaky. "I think I may have an idea."


	20. Out

Once the truth was out, Hikaru found himself trapped between two very angry women. One was definitely not angry at HIM, but that did not make the situation any better.

"I'll crucify her - I'll skin her alive..." - Yuzuha was pacing the room, the tigress uncaged.

Kaoru was staring at her knees, her features working ominously.

Hikaru's first instinct had been to try and placate his mother by saying it was as much his fault as Toroko's. After all, he wasn't a baby - he had known what he was doing. But admitting as much would have been twisting the knife in Kaoru's back. It did not matter that it ended before he met her. He could pinpoint the exact moment she broke when she heard.

And yet, now was not the time for excuses. Yes, he was underage and the law absolved him; yes, it had been some time ago, before he had even met her, but being a man for Kaoru was the least he could do.

"Kaoru," he said, taking her hand and bowing his head. "Look, I know there's nothing I can say that'll make this better, so I'm not going to try and make dumb excuses. Whatever you want to do to me, I'll take my punishment."

But Kaoru's hand hung lifelessly in his, and she continued to stare past him at the floor, unfeeling and unseeing.

"I am just so, so sorry that it was not you," he said. "And I'm even more sorry you had to find out this way."

But Kaoru shook her head, shielding her eyes with her hand as if to physically block out his presence. For a few minutes she continued to sit with her eyes covered, then stood up, turned on her heel, and ran out of the room.

Yuzuha and Hikaru exchanged a lightning-quick series of looks that that amounted to "What do I do?!" - "Well, at this point it doesn't matter what you do" - "Well, should I go after her?" - "YES! GO!"

As Hikaru rushed out the door, Yuzuha drew a deep sigh.

"Alright, I suppose it's back to business," she said to Kanagawa. "Looks like we have a witness to discredit."

…

As soon as Hikaru set foot in Kaoru's room, a harsh odor assaulted his nostrils. With mild horror, he realized it was Chanel no. 5 - but hellishly concentrated. The shards of a broken bottle lay on the floor by the dressing table, and a dark stain decorated the wall above.

"Kaoru -"

The only answer was a sob from beyond the foot of the bed. His sister sitting with her face in her knees, the floor littered with the contents of her otherwise barely used makeup table.

"Kaoru." He lowered himself beside her. "Look, I know I'm not your favorite person right now, but…"

"Go away."

Kaoru raised her eyes from her knees, and had a shine he barely recognized, like dark obsidian.

"I just want to know you'll be okay. I know you might hate me…"

"You're disgusting," she spat, still looking past him and talking as if to herself. "I mean, I don't care so much that it happened - if it were someone I never knew, or even someone at school… But that this is someone I saw every day - the person who brought my meals and handled my dirty laundry…"

"I know. I'm sorry. I should have told you. There's no excuse for not telling you." He made a move toward her, but she shifted away with a violence so sudden and uncharacteristic that he recoiled.

"No. Get out. Right now." She scampered to her feet. "Get the HELL out. I don't want to see you."

"Look, if you don't want me as a boyfriend anymore, I understand…"

"I DON'T want you. Not as a - not as ANYTHING. GO AWAY."

She backed away, slowly, until she reached the dressing table and grabbed it as if she were about to topple.

"Kaoru -"

"Hikaru," she said, her voice suddenly very tired. "Please. Just leave. Don't make me throw something at you."

…

When Kaoru first heard, her first thought was that she no longer wanted any of it. Not Hikaru, not Yuzuha, not Ouran - none of it. She was not ever sure how she made it back to her room - the world had been swimming wildly and it seemed like any minute the lights would go out. But once she did, the first thing she did was vomit, violently, into the toilet, and she vomited again and again until she began to taste bile and the vomit ran thin. She then spent a few seconds wheezing into the toilet bowl, but the tears would not come, so she ran to the bedroom and hurled whatever she could get her hands on against the walls, hoping it would leave a dent - and then collapsed screaming into her hands.

If years of vague loneliness had at one point made sense once she met Hikaru, that feeling was a million years ago. Now, it turned her guts to even think of him. It was like living out a nightmare, where pain was the only way your body could tell you to let go. And the pain was worse than any she had ever felt -- the sort that was everywhere and nowhere at once, and made you feel like you had been shot, with lead was seeping into your veins.  
She needed out. Not at the cost of suicide, of course - she was not going down that path again. But out nonetheless, that much was certain. She only had a vague idea as to where she would go or what she would do, but somehow that did not faze her.  
And yet, you did not simply walk out of a house and start walking. She was not crazy enough for that. And on top of that, next to Hikaru she herself was the one person she hated most at that moment. The mere sight of her face in the mirror - or rather what it recalled to mind - made her want to vomit all over again. She knew what she needed - and that was someone else. Not just anyone else -- but someone, someone more sensible than her, if only to be present and to dilute the pain.  
But who? Her old friends? It would take forever to explain, and when it came down to it, how could they even sympathize? Her old life was slipping away at an alarming rate, and the people she once knew would not understand how she could look such a gift horse in the mouth. But who else was there? Despite her overnight popularity, the boys at the host club were the closest thing she had to friends - and yet Tamaki, though well-meaning, was far too much of an airhead, Honey was too incongruous to exist, and Mori hardly ever said anything.

With shaking hands, she took out her phone and pulled up her contact list.

It was ridiculous -- nuts. But there was nothing to lose. After all, if something happened and she could not go through with it, she could always hang up.

…

Contrary to popular belief, Kyouya was not as cold-blooded as all that. Although he was expert at hiding it, he was not immune to the charms of the opposite sex. In fact, he developed an infatuation on average once a semester. And while initially he had viewed the circumstance as nothing but a hindrance - a failing of both body and brain - by sixteen he had resigned himself to the matter like one might have to a seasonal cold. He had even learned to enjoy it for what it was.

For that reason, he had no reason to believe - just yet - that there was anything more to it than that. As like as not, his biannual illness had simply found a particularly inconvenient target.

The first time he had seen Kaoru was in the hallway when visiting Hikaru in the hospital. Needless to say, it took all his years of self-training just to keep a straight face when he saw the spitting image of his Host Club colleague wearing a skirt and with long hair pulled into a handsome plait. And when he found Hikaru just where he left him the previous time - in his hospital bed, too woozy to walk and volunteering no comment on the incident, Kyouya took it upon himself to investigate. Having chatted up the nurses after his visit, he learned that the girl was in fact Hikaru's sister, and that she had been coming to see him almost every day. Then, without further delay, Kyouya set to scouring public and not-so-public records, and within a few hours he knew everything there was to know about Kaoru. And that might have been the end of it, had he not found his fingers clicking back to one of her pictures for the rest of the day.  
It was a newspaper photo of her courtside in a basketball uniform, blissful at apparently having scored the winning point in city playoffs. And although the image was black and white and highly pixelated, there was something… luminous about it. This was, of course, in stark contrast to the way she looked the next time he laid eyes on her outside the club. Usually, Kyouya got annoyed when people cried - he found it childish, if not a moral failing in people past a certain age. But Kaoru did not look like she was crying; rather, she looked like she was hemorrhaging, and seemed no more capable of stopping the tears than she might have been of stopping blood. And whereas there was only one thing to do in the event of a physical hemorrhage, an emotional hemorrhage was a whole different animal, and the thought of Kaoru weeping refused to leave him even after the situation had resolved itself.  
Of course, if it DID prove to be something more, he could foresee a number of problems. For one thing, it was one thing to ride out a feeling for a casual acquaintance and to know that it would end, and quite another to have it be for a member of the same, tight-knit organization and to have to repress it for months if not years. At the same time, dating within a friend group was always a gamble, even if Hikaru were not as protective of his sister as he was. And further, there was the matter of Kaoru's - and Hikaru's - questionable biological origins, which, no matter how much wealth they stood to inherit, was still a strike against them in the eyes the older generation. Add to that the fact that Kaoru, being intersex, would not be able to produce an heir, and it made for a right mesalliance. But still - it wasn't that any of those things were insurmountable problems; it simply made no sense to think about them at length just yet. After all, more than likely it would soon blow over, and until it did, he could do worse than to use as a way of breaking up the monotony.

As a consequence, Kyouya had just finished indulging in a fantasy of Kaoru lounging in a bath of bubbles across the way, and had stepped out of the shower when he heard his phone go off. He tossed on a robe, shaking the remanats of water out of his hair, and crossed the room to where his cell phone lay charging. And were Kyouya less well-schooled in maintaining a calm demeanor even when alone, his stomach might have performed a very unsettling acrobatic maneuver when he saw the number.

But as the case was, he WAS an exceedingly calm person most days, even and perhaps especially on his own turf with his skin scrubbed freshly clean. So he flipped open his phone and pressed it against his ear, closing his eyes the better to imagine himself coming up behind her, taking her by the shoulders, and sliding his hands forward over that pretty, tight chest.

"Hello, Kaoru."

But in response he heard only a raspy breathing. No, better yet, a wheezing that tried very hard to become words but kept running out of steam half-way.

"Kaoru?"

More wheezing.

Had it been anybody else, Kyouya might have written it off as a pocket dial and hung up right then and there. But given that it WAS Kaoru, a relatively recent addition to the club who had never even called him before, it was unlikely that he would be on her speed-dial or even on her recent calls list. Besides, pocket dials usually resulted in warped, amorphous sounds like those heard underwater - and yet here she was, clearly breathing straight into the receiver.

"Kaoru, did something happen?" he asked, styling his voice to sound as measured as he could.

"S-s-senpai… I'm -" Her voice fell, and she breathed heavily for a few moments. "S-s-sorry…"

"No need to apologize." He paused, taking a moment to turn over various possible wordings of what he wanted to say in his head. "You sound.... Distressed."

"N-n-no… It-it-it's not…" Her voice snapped and her breathing became more labored still, and he could almost imagine her contorting her face.

"Are you hurt?"

"N-no."

"Is someone else hurt?"

"No."

"Where are you?"

"Home."

"Home meaning Shirokanedai?"

"Yes."

"Who are you with right now?"

"Nobody."

"You're alone?"

"Yes."

"Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"N-no…"

"Did something happen?"

Silence.

Wheezing.

"I'm sorry - I -"

"No need to be sorry. What can I do to help?"

"I… don't know…"

"Well, there must have been some reason you called me."

More wheezing.

"Would it be better to meet and talk in person?"

Silence. Breathing, though suddenly less heavy.

"Should I come get you? We can go somewhere and talk. I can be there in half an hour."

…

"Mrs. Hitachiin, may I go somewhere?" Kaoru paused in the doorway to Yuzuha's office, where the latter was still poring over papers with the lawyer.

"Oh? And just where are you planning on going at ten at night, Kaoru?"

"To see a friend."

"What friend?"

"Kyouya Ootori."

"Kaoru." Yuzuha put down the file she had been thumbing through and ran her hand across her forehead. "You know, if you're having problems with one boy, going to see another is almost never the answer."

"It's not like that." Kaoru paused. "I - I guess I just want to be around someone who isn't part of this family... No offense."  
Yuzuha cast a skeptical look at the girl - face drawn and blotchy, and eyes glistening with an unhealthy brightness. From what she knew, Kyouya was the most respectable of Hikaru's friends. Respectable enough, she hoped, not to take advantage of the situation.

"Alright." Yuzuha reached for her reading glasses. "But be back my midnight. Because if you're not, I WILL call you - both. And if you don't answer your phones, I WILL call Kyouya's parents - at which point you can bet that the entire Ootori family private police force won't enough to save your skins."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hitachiin." Kaoru turned with a stoic nod, but paused just shy of the door. "Oh, and could you not tell Hikaru? Please? Just... tell him I've gone to see Uncle Kenji or something."


	21. Sympathy for the Devil

"You know, Kaoru," said Kyouya. "I'm sorry to say, but the less I know about the situation, the less helpful I am likely to be."

He had picked her up from the Hitachiin estate and taken her to a cafe in a five-star hotel in a nearby part of the city. But even though he had done what he could to make her feel at ease, choosing a place known for its quiet and ordering her a taro root milkshake that never failed to please, Kaoru remained morose and silent as ever. Indeed, even though she was no longer hyperventilating like she had been on the phone, she took one sip and turned even paler and sicker-looking, and hardly said a word since. Had the circumstances been any different, Kyouya would been annoyed -- since it was abundantly clear that she had not thought through exactly what she she had wanted out of their meeting, and since Friday was the one night a week he reserved for himself. But still, it WAS an almost too lucky turn of events, for even a sad and dull-eyed Kaoru made him feel lightyears more motivated. A part of him was even convinced he could turn the situation in his favor, and, if nothing else, that he would leave knowing more about her. After all, one never could tell who might prove to be important.

"I'm sorry, senpai," she said to her placemat. The skyline twinkled outside the window, taking up an entire wall, and the sounds of jazz piano meandered across the room.

Again with the sorry. As if sorry ever bought anyone lunch.

But then again, Kaoru WAS a special case. With everything that had happened to her, fully rational behavior was hardly to be expected. Indeed, contrary to popular notion, Kyouya always tried to empathize with people -- if only to understand what motivated them. But with Kaoru this was difficult, her experience being far too removed from anything he knew. As such, presuming to know was not the best strategy.

And yet, as far as the game of twenty questions, which this would likely turn out to be… That day the Hitachiins had had their adoption hearing. He was not able to get his hands on the court records -- it was too soon, and in any case the trial was still ongoing. But it was a place to start, especially since -- oddly enough -- it was him and not Hikaru or anyone else in that family that Kaoru had sought out.

"I understand," he said. "Some things are hard to talk about. But for what it's worth, I'm glad you came to me. I was just thinking about you and your brother today. You had your hearing, is that right? How did that go?"

He watched carefully for her reaction -- and, indeed, she seemed to grow smaller, sinking into her seat. In the glow from antique samovars refinished as chandeliers after an avant-garde trend, her eyes were a dark velvet that drank up all the light that came their way.

"Uh -- alright. It's not over yet."

"Is that what's bothering you?"

"Kind of… Not really." Before, she had been staring straight ahead and moving as if through water, but suddenly she bit her lip and looked to the side. Her arms, he noticed, were pressed tightly against her torso, and her hands were barely above the table. In fact, she looked like she was bracing to slip under the table at any moment in case someone she knew walked by.

"Well, if it's legal advice you want, I may not be quite as good as the Hitachiins' lawyers --"

"No, that's not it" -- she said, blinking quickly.

Ah. Not it, is it? Good to rule out the obvious, at least.

"Are you worried things might not go your way?" He narrowed his eyes to match the way hers caught and absorbed the light. "That you might have to go to -- Kyushu, is it?"

"No. No. I -- I mean… No."

"Is it anything about today, then, that's the issue?"

"Um… Yes and no."

Maddening. Who on earth did she think she--

No. For goodness' sake, no. This is Kaoru. She could not possibly be doing this on purpose; she's too…

And more than that, it was hard to keep a single disgruntled thought in his head when her skin had such a secret warmth about it. It almost begged to be touched, and she was close -- so close within his grasp, and had come all on her own.

No. No. It was ridiculous. For all intents and purposes, he did not even know her. And come to think of it, if were he to touch her right then and there, whatever they had would wither on the bud, whereas if he were crack what was troubling her, he would become the hero, and -- who knows -- she might even end up initiating the same thing on her own. As such, patience was the name of the game. Because after all, she HAD sought him out. That meant she was not entirely indifferent.

"It's been… Ongoing, I suppose," she said.

Hallelujah, we have a… well, we have a something.

"Ongoing?" He raised an eyebrow and turned his head a bit, such that he did not seem to be looking straight at her. He found that made a conversation feel less like an interrogation, and people invariably said more as a result.

She nodded.

"So it's something that just happened to come to a head recently."

She nodded again, making what looked like a a catlike effort to collapse her ribcage.

"When would you say it began?"

Kaoru stared at the condensation on the outside of her glass and tried to think. But thinking involved Hikaru, and the thoughts came like blood from a stone. In hindsight, it started when she began to fall for her brother -- whenever that had been. Because that was what loving meant, did it not? She knew he would hurt her -- that they would hurt each other. That came part and parcel with the condition of love. But she had also not minded until recently.

"A while ago," she answered.

"A while ago? Meaning, a week? A month? Since New Year's?"

"No, since I met the… Hitachiins."

The way she said "Hitachiins" sounded as if there was something heavy about the word, and a great deal like the way she had spoken earlier, when he had asked -- as per rules of etiquette -- about her brother and his parents. But at that point, he had written it off to her overall flattened state, and she had come a bit more alive since, which made the contrast starker.

"Tell me, Kaoru," he said. "Has your new home been… comfortable?"

"Yes." 

Ah. The pause. 

"But?" Kyouya's eyebrow inched higher.

"Who says there's a but?" Her eyes darted to the milkshake.

"Everything does. Your whole face. The way you hold yourself. The fact that you're here." He leaned back against the leather seat back with a smile. "Not to mention the fact that you're reaching out to people you've only just met."

He had not wanted to corner her, but waiting it out did not seem to be getting them anywhere. He needed to provoke her somehow, and could only hope she would not start apologizing again.

Kaoru drew a barely perceptible sigh. Under her cropped hoodie she had visible collar bones, and they became even more visible as she slumped forward. 

"No. You're right," she said.

"Well, then." He shifted forward, uncrossing his arms.

"I'm -- No, it's all been very good," she said. "I just…" She wrinkled her nose and screwed up her face like she had swallowed something sharp, and sighed again. "Whenever I feel like things are good, something always comes up and everything fall apart. And then I'll be barely done picking up the pieces, when…" She paused, as if her throat had gone raw. "It's… nothing. I shouldn't have brought it up --"

"No, all feelings are legitimate," Kyouya replied, folding his hands under his chin. "If for no other reason than that you have them. If you feel like something's wrong, it's probably worth looking into. That much I know from experience." And that much was true. A lesser-known fact about Kyouya was that he relied on intuition far more than he liked to admit. More often than not, the start for many of his "research" efforts were mere hunches, and he had perfected the art of looking unfazed in the offchance that his inner compass led him astray.

He paused and watched for her reaction, but her eyes were fixed firmly on her placemat, her words apparently spent for the time being. 

"Are you having a hard time with the transition from living as a commoner to where you are now?" he asked. "Having more often means more is expected of you. Most people don't like to think about that."

Kaoru shook her head, still staring at the weave of the cloth.

"No, that's not it. Although, you're right. I do feel like it would be a lot more significant if I disappointed people about right now. More so than in the past -- which is ironic."

"Well, that's definitely normal -- to feel that way. You'll find that many people around you do to a certain extent, even though they may not show it." 

In fact, it was far more true than Kaoru knew -- especially with him. But it also was strange that Kaoru was already burdened with more expectations than she could handle. After all, she seemed to have a natural, ballerina-like grace that -- wherever her parentage -- helped her fit right in, as if she were born to be surrounded by splendor. And from what he knew of Yuzuha, he was hard-pressed to imagine she was like his own father, and would push a child she had not even officially adopted yet to go above and beyond her high standards. After all, there was also Hikaru, and in their tradition-bound world most girls were still little more than bargaining chips in family alliances. But then again, Kaoru was not the typical girl either, and it was not as if girls were not burdened with expectations -- those of society being even more stringent, perhaps, than those of their parents. And so it was highly likely that Kaoru was being given impossible ultimatums, and threatened with the state orphanage if she did not do this or that. And yet, the question was -- why? What could the Hitachiins possibly gain by it? Was it fear of the talk that was bound to be stirred up about Hikaru's origins again? That never stopped Yuzuha in the past, and at the end of the day the Hitachiins did not seem like the sorts of people who would punish someone for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, unless…

"Is someone keeping you from feeling good about yourself?" Kyouya finally ventured, noticing that his show of empathy had had the intended effect, and Kaoru had begun to reach for her milkshake.

She paused with straw in hand, her shoulders collapsing again -- and it was better than any answer. He might have yawned at her being so easy to read, if it was not still marveling, more than a week later, at having encountered someone so simple and yet so poised and self-aware -- even if the situation at hand was stretching her communication skills to the limit.

"No, nobody's doing that, exactly."

But?

"I just never know what's going to happen. I feel like I am walking on eggshells all the time, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it from happening again. I'm just not sure if I can go on living that way."

"Prevent what from happening again, Kaoru?"

"Me getting hurt."

Well-well. She was even better at ambiguity than he was. And yet, strictly speaking, even though it was clear enough he still wanted her to say it. Mostly it was because he was shocked -- if something as strong as shock were in his repertoire of emotions -- that his mind had even gone there, and that, from what she had said, he was growing increasingly sure that he was right.

"I just… don't trust," she said.

Don't trust WHO? Devil take it…

"So it sounds like things at home are rocky right now."

She nodded, letting go of the breath she had been holding.

Then again, it did not matter. He could spend the rest of the night trying to hash out the details, or he could do what he knew he would have to do eventually. 

"I understand if you can't tell me more," he said, nodding. "But it looks to me like sort of situation where it might be beneficial to take a step back."

He had chosen his words carefully, looking at her face but not her eyes so as not to seem like he was forcing the issue. And when he finished speaking and allowed their eyes to meet again, his heart almost skipped a beat when she did not look she was ready to shrink back and burst into tears if he reached out and inched a hand closer to hers.

"Maybe leave for a while," he added. "When you're in the thick of things, it's always harder to figure out what to do."

She nodded, very slowly, long fingers tightening over her straw.

"If you need a place to go, you're welcome to stay with me and my family. Or with my sister -- she's married and lives separately, if you're worried about how staying with a male classmate might look. Or I could arrange a hotel for you and --"

"No."

Kyouya raised his eyebrows.

"No, thank you, I can't." Kaoru's voice had very suddenly grown cold and her eyes became glassy, even in what little light the chandeliers gave.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. In fact" -- she reached, abruptly, for the purse that sat by her side -- "I should be getting back. Thank you for everything."

"Kaoru."

But she was already going through her bag, searching for something he could not see, and he cursed himself silently for letting himself get carried away imagining what it might be like to be her benefactor -- or even to have her under the same roof. Perhaps he had been wise in avoiding meaningful interactions with girls he liked until then, even moving things around to make it look like he was booked solid if they requested him at the Host Club.

"It's 11:30. I need to be back at 12."

"Are you sure you'll be alright tonight?"

"Yes, absolutely." She extracted what she had been looking for -- her wallet -- and made a move to get up.

"Kaoru, put that away."

"Why?"

"Because. I am the one who brought you here."

"And I am the one who called you," she said, fingers pressed over the wallet's clasp. It must have been her old one --hardly brand name, and slightly worn around the corners.

"Kaoru, I understand if you do not want to accept things from me, but this is inconsequential. Really," he said.

But in truth, it made almost too much sense. It WAS whispered around the Host Club that Kyouya Ootori never did anything for free -- and perhaps he was guilty this time, too. If the Hitachiins had made her believe that her new life was anything but no-strings-attached, she was even less likely to trust him. And yet, he did not know what kept him from seizing her by the arm and physically restraining her as he whispered hotly in her ear -- "No, come away with me. I will fix everything." Because he did, he did like to fix things for the few people he cared about. And he wanted to buy her affection with help, not with handbags, which was progress, Goddammit…

His emotions must have slipped into his features, because Kaoru took a step back -- her hand, too narrow for a boy's, with fingers too blunt-tipped for a girl's -- resting defensively on her purse. Suddenly, she looked like she was made of marble in the fluorescent night beyond the window, and her translucent likeness floated over the city like that of a deposed queen. 

"Also, this place does not take cash -- or credit cards," Kyouya said. It was not, strictly speaking, true, but would put the issue to rest quickly. "My family has an account here, and that's how everything is taken care of."

"Please, just take me home," she whispered.

"Alright." He nodded. "But Kaoru. Please, keep me informed. I want to know if you're alright -- or if you're not. I care about the well-being of all the hosts -- outside of school too." 

She responded by taking another step back, and he knew he would have to find another way.


	22. Flight

When Kaoru kicked him out of her room that night, there was only one thought going through his mind. Kaoru did not want him. Not as a - not as anything, she said. It felt like a hot branding iron to the chest, and it was all he could do to keep from doubling over as he made his way, half-blinded, down the hall, and nearly toppled over the threshold of his mother's study. He was not sure how he ended up there - maybe he did not have the strength to continue on to his own room, which was a few doors beyond, or maybe he felt like he was five years old again, and like everything was over.

Yuzuha, to her credit, had gotten up from her desk, saying something he could not hear to Kanagawa, and took him around the shoulders, steering him to his bedroom. Once there, she made him lay down and encouraged him not to keep it in but to cry and go to sleep. She even had the maid bring a bowl of ice cream, tea, and a hot water bottle, and sat with him for a few minutes, running her hand over his arm as he buried his head under a pillow and wet the sheets and mattress with his tears. She then left to save him further embarrassment.

In the morning, he woke to find that rebooting had not helped. The sun sent blinding showers through the slits in the drapes, and for a split second he could not remember where he was. But then the pain in his arms and legs reached his brain - as did the branding iron - and there was nowhere to run and hide.

Kaoru did not want him. Not as a - not as anything.

No, it was not true. It could not have been. It was all a dream. Or maybe he hallucinated it. That had to be it. Or, no, rather - it was all just a big misunderstanding, and he would need to set it right. He had to. After all, they were Hikaru and Kaoru, and Kaoru was understandably upset, and could not possibly have meant what she said.

He peeled himself out of bed, his joints aching as if he spent the night on a rickety dead-cart being beaten with samurai clubs. The sun shone, brilliant and indifferent, and as he emerged into the hallway he had to blink his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness.

To his surprise, the door to Kaoru's room was open. Ajar, even. And the bed was made. Kaoru was nowhere to be seen and the room was frightfully clean. Even the textbooks were aligned in a perfect pyramid atop the desk, and the pens and pencils ranked in squadrons according to length. Hikaru approached the bed, and saw a piece of paper on the bedside table, folded in half with his name on the outside. He seized it.

"Hikaru" - it read, in Kaoru's bubble-like handwriting - "I was excessively harsh in my choice of words last night, and for that I am sorry. However, I've decided I cannot be around you anymore. I know you mean well, but whenever I am with you, I keep getting hurt, and maybe that's the universe trying to tell me something. In any case, I realized I need to take care of myself first, so please don't blame yourself. Just try to be happy without me. Kaoru."

Midway through the letter, Hikaru's legs began to give way. He ran his eyes over the lines again and again, but the symbols refused to come together into anything meaningful.

It was not true. It simply could not be.

…

Yuzuha was in her study, having just pressed her morning cold-cream over her face and booted up her computer when Hikaru exploded into the room.

"MOTHER! WHERE THE HELL IS KAORU?!"

His hair was disheveled, and he looked like he had slept in his clothes again, but after nearly 15 years Yuzuha was used to standing back and watching the fireworks show run its course.

"She left early this morning," she replied.

"Where the hell did she go?!"

"Language, Hikaru." Yuzuha turned back to her screen. "I believe she said she was going to Kyushu, to stay with her uncle's family."

"Kyushu?!"

"Yes, Kyushu."

"So you KNEW about this? - HOW COULD YOU LET HER GO?!"

"Kaoru is old enough to make her own decisions. If she does not want to stay, there is nothing I can do to stop her."

Hikaru felt the sensation drain from his legs.

"But -" I thought you were on my side, he wanted to scream.

"If you want her back, you're going to have to go and get her yourself," Yuzuha said, tilting back her head to peer at the screen over her glasses.

…

She had gone to Kyushu - his mother had said. But had far had she gotten? Come to think of it, he did not even have her family's address there - just uncle Kenji's business card, which only had the company info and listed a place in Miyazaki prefecture he had never heard of. Hikaru pulled out his laptop and flipped it open. It was easy enough to look up train schedules, but… no, it was hopeless - there was any number of trains every day leaving for Fukuoka out of Tokyo. What was he supposed to do, just show up at the train station - of which there were several - and wander around in hopes of finding her? And what if Kaoru had sprung for an airline ticket? The prices, after all, were almost comparable.

He pulled out his phone, scrolled feverishly through the contact list.

Pick up, pick up, pick up - he pleaded, pressing the receiver to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Kyouya-senpai! I need help!"

"What's going on, Hikaru?"

"Kaoru's run away. I have reason to believe she's headed for Kyushu - Fukuoka, most likely, from there I'm not sure. Is there any way to head her off? Any way to find out what train she's taking - anything…"

Kyuoya was silent for a beat.

"Well," he said, his voice as imperturbable as always, "There are definitely ways to check passenger lists on all the airlines and bullet trains out of Tokyo. Regional express trains are a little harder. She left today, did you say?"

"Ok, great - that would be GREAT… And yeah, yeah, she did."

"Alright, hold on a moment…"

Hikaru heard clicking in the background. Good old Kyuoua. He never needed to be told when something was urgent.

"Right," said Kyouya after a minute, "Looks like Kaoru Suzumiya bought a ticket for the 11:35 out of Ikebukuro to Fukuoka."

"But - that's in 25 minutes! How am I supposed to - "

Kyouya was silent.

"Can you - is there any way to cause a delay?"

"Hikaru, despite appearances, I am not God," Kyouya chuckled. The NERVE - he was chuckling. Hikaru nearly crushed the phone in his hand.

"Can't - can't you call in a bomb threat or something?"

"Hikaru, that's illegal - plus I don't think you realize what a bomb threat entails. If I do that, there'll be chaos. Everything'll get shuffled around, time tables will be useless, and Kaoru might panic and run off, so it'll be even harder to find her."

"Ok, well, how the hell am I supposed to get halfway across town in less than half an hour?"

Kyouya sighed.

"Wait a minute…" Kyuoya's family ran a network of hospitals, did it not? "Kyuoya, can I borrow an ambulance?"

"An… ambulance?"

"Yes, an ambulance! They can run red lights! And clear an entire street! And go over the speed limit!"

Kyouya sighed, more audibly this time, and Hikaru could almost imagine him biting down on his lower lip.

"Alright," he said. "I'll see what I can do… But if this works, you owe me."

…

Kyuoya had done one better. Not only was he able to produce and ambulance - he had called Honey and Mori, and convinced the latter to break his no driving rule. In less than ten minutes, the shota-wild type due had picked up Hikaru in front of his house, and they were speeding down the streets of downtown Tokyo at nearly twice the speed limit. Hikaru huddled in the back among the medical equipment, and scrolled through his contact list one more time.

"Hello?" he heard Tamaki's voice after two rings.

Thank goodness. His friends were uncommonly quick at picking up their phones that day.

"Boss! Sorry to bother you, but I need advice on female psychology - stat!"

"Uh…" - it seemed that Tamaki - although a notorious early riser - was just waking up. "Alright. But if you need advice on female psychology, wouldn't it be better to ask an actual female? Like Kaoru, for instance?"

"I can't ask Kaoru - it's ABOUT Kaoru."

"Oh, I see. What happened?"

"Well, it's a long story, but how do you keep the girl of your dreams from getting on a train and leaving forever?"

Hikaru heard a sound he was fairly sure came from Tamaki collapsing where he stood on the other end of the line.

"Uh… wait a minute," he stammered. "H-hold on… KAORU?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay - the incestuous twin thing is real. Now will you help me or not?"

"O-okay, but you do realize there will be problems with this going forward?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we can deal with that later - right now I just need to get her back."

"Alright, well!" His fatherly duty discharged, Tamaki lost no time in moving on to the matter at hand - and quite enthusiastically at that. "If that's the case, now's the time for a big, romantic gesture! Run after her through the train station! Tell her how you feel! Get down on one knee! Hijack the announcement board and make it say you love her!…"

"Boss, with all due respect, that sounds idiotic. Have you MET Kaoru? It'll only embarrass her -"

" - Or hijack the PA speakers and play her favorite song…"

"Thanks. I'm hanging up now."

"WAIT! -"

"What?"

"Ok, seriously. Listen up. Here's what you do…"

…

"Kyo-chan, do you know why Kao-chan ran away?"

Mori had gone to return the ambulance, and Honey had propped his chin on the bannister, staring out over the bustling platform where Hikaru disappeared a few moments ago. Kyouya was leaning on the same bannister, peering into a pair of binoculars.

"No, Mitsukuni. But it does seem strange, doesn't it?"

When Kaoru turned down his help the night before, he had not expected her to take his advice quite so quickly and so literally. But while he could only guess what kinds of things were going on at the Hitachiin house, he opted to help Hikaru because Kaoru's moving 700 miles away would make it that much harder to keep tabs on the situation.

"I really hope they sort it out," said Honey, furrowing his brow. His eyes were fixed on the checkered sac-voyage of a woman staring anxiously at her watch. "Anyone can see Hika-chan loves Kao-chan; I just hope she didn't run away because she doesn't love him back. I hope it's because she loves him back and is afraid of what that means."

"Love him back? Honey, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Well, yes. Hika-chan called Tama-chan on the way over, and he said Kao-chan was the girl of his dreams…"

Kyouya's eyebrows were about shoot upwards when they were interrupted by the Host Club King in the flesh, who had zoomed up to them, panting.

"Am I late? Did I miss it? What's going on?! How's he doing?!" Tamaki snatched the binoculars away from Kyouya, and slung himself over the bannister. "No - shoot… That IDIOT, I told him not to… Kyouya?"

But Kyoya had succumbed to syncope. He was not used to being the last to know things.

…

Kaoru had bought a ticket for the shinkansen, which made it possible to find not only her car but her seat assignment. Hikaru had gotten there with time to spare, and was standing at the end of a queue that had formed where strips on the floor and lit displays marked off the doors of the train. He had been waiting for several minutes, and had almost begun to panic as the train pulled up and the line began to dissipate. But then, at last, he caught sight of Kaoru coming toward him. She was glancing nervously upward from time to time and wore a light trench coat of his mother's making, small pumps that bumped her up an inch, and pulled a small suitcase. Her eyes were tired, and when she saw him she seemed almost unsurprised.

"You didn't say goodbye." He smiled.

"I left a note," she replied, her voice expressionless.

"I'm your brother, Kaoru. You're going away, and all I get is a note?"

"Hikaru" - she sighed - "Look. You're not a bad person, and I care about you. But we're not good for each other. In fact, maybe there's a reason why we got separated back in the day."

Hikaru felt a painful tug in his stomach, and something like pepper pushed its way up his throat.

"Kaoru, don't say that…"

"Whenever I'm with you, I keep getting hurt. And the maid - I know it's stupid, but that was the last straw." She started choking up.

"Kaoru -"

He reached out to take her hand, but she pulled away, almost too violently. He let his hand fall, and she sighed and reached for her purse.

"Look, Kaoru, I'm sorry," he said. "I understand you're hurt and you need to heal. And if you want to leave, I'm not going to stop you. I just wanted to tell you how I feel."

Kaoru extracted a packet from her bag and pulled out a tissue, pressing it against her eyes in a gesture she seemed to have gotten from Yuzuha.

"The thing is," Hikaru went on. "I've never let anyone in before - never cared for anyone before. So I overdid it. You know what they say - make a fool kowtow and he'll break his head open. And if you don't want someone like that in your life, I understand. But these few weeks that I've known you have been the best in my life. They've been the only time that I've felt like life was worth living, and… They made me want to be a better person."

She listened dispassionately, and sighed when he finished.

"Hikaru," she said. "I know. And I appreciate that. But I'm going to need something more than promises and good intentions if I'm going to change my mind."

Her eyes were sad, sadder than he had ever seen them, but she was right, and Hikaru felt his entire body slump.

"I just…" She paused. Even if she stayed, how were they supposed to move on after all that had happened? And yet… He had said that the last few weeks had been the best in his life, and in spite of it all the same thing was true for her as well. She could go, and get on that train, and in a few short hours it would be as if Hikaru, and the Hitachiins, and Ouran, and everything else had never existed. And although it would be a duller, more ordinary existence, she would feel better for a while. But it would not be like waking up from a bad dream. Because unlike a dream, all those things really did exist, and would continue to exist, and would visit her again and again at odd and not so odd moments. No matter how you twisted it, there would be no hopping back onto the old timeline. And, more importantly, there would be no happiness for her as long as Hikaru was alive and they were apart by choice.

"Kaoru," Hikaru said. "I know you have no reason to trust me. And I know you need to take some time for yourself so you can feel better. But for what it's worth, I don't think going to Kyushu is the answer, and I don't think being apart will help us sort things out."

Another train, somewhere in the distance, made a sound like pistons releasing steam, and the PA system came on.

"This is the final boarding call for bullet train number 569 departing at 11:35 for Fukuoka -"

"Please, Kaoru, give me a chance. Just one."

The conductors had assumed their positions, checking doors and ushering in that last of the stragglers, and the light-up signs above their heads began to blink orange.

Kaoru sighed and took a step toward Hikaru, drawing him into a hug. She stood there for what felt like a very long time, until she heard the doors slide softly shut and windows began to glide past them with a rustle and a squeak of rails.

When the windows melted into a blur, she finally drew away.

"Hikaru, you idiot." She laughed, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. "That was my last 25,000 yen**."

(**About $240).


	23. Any Other Name

Kaoru was in her room, her suitcase open and crystal flows pouring fast and strong past the blinds. She had just begun folding the clothes she packed haphazardly the night before when Hikaru came in and knelt down beside her.

"Hey, Kaoru," he said. "May I sit with you for a while?"

"Sure, Hikaru." She looked up and smiled, a V-neck t-shirt draped over her forearm. "But I think I'm going to take a nap soon. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night."

"That's okay. And yeah - that's a good idea."

He watched her fold the V-neck into a neat square with the collar in front, and placed it on top of a pile of similar shirts. You don't need to do that, you know - he wanted to say - You can just ask the servants. Toroko had given notice almost immediately in anticipation of the obvious, but Kaoru had a new maid to take care of her.

"I love you, you know," he said.

"You do?" She looked up and sniffed a soft chuckle. "Took you long enough." She turned back to the case and extracted a pair of pants from the knot of clothing.

"I do, Kaoru. I'm serious. I love you. Like THAT. And I find would find it absolutely tragic if I couldn't nap with you."

"We'll get in trouble if we nap together," Kaoru replied, laughing and rolling the pants into a cylinder.

"I don't think we will. We can stay on top of the covers and I can put a fleece over you but not me, so if anyone comes they can see we're not doing anything inappropriate."

"Okay." Kaoru nodded, adding the folded pants to the pile. Hikaru got to his feet and offered her a hand. Once she was up, he pressed her hand to his lips.

"Okay, I'm just going to close these blinds and bring my princess a blanket. You get comfortable."

She nodded, and he kissed the knuckle of her index finger once more before letting go to skate off to the window. She stretched out on the bed, pulling off her socks. When he came back, he had a quilted throw-blanket in his hands, and tucked it around her until she was nestled as if in a cocoon. He then lay down and pressed his body against hers, cupping her face and kissing each of her cheeks in turn before pulling her lips into a slow, sensuous embrace that tasted a bit like strawberries.

When they broke the embrace, he realized she had not closed her eyes, and they were a soft, iridescent chartreuse.

"I love you too, Hikaru," she said. "Like THAT. I'm sorry I didn't say it right away."

"That's okay."

She was silent for a few moments, and he ran his hand over the curve of her body.

"I'm just not sure how this is going to work," she said. "You know. Us. Going forward."

He smiled.

"Well, to be honest, I'm not sure either. But we'll figure it out. We're Hikaru and Kaoru after all." He nestled in closer with his elbow under his cheek, the better to see eye to eye. "If there's one thing I know, it's that you're beautiful, and patient, and far too kind for putting up with an idiot like me. But most importantly, you're the one I want. Mom and dad will accept us soon enough, and the rest of the world can't be far behind. Just no more running off without saying goodbye, okay?"

…

"Alright, Hikaru. Up."

"Aw, come on, mom. Kaoru's just napping. I'm not going to do anything to her while she's asleep."

The house had been quiet for far too long, and Yuzuha had decided to check on the twins, seeing how Hikaru - in an uncommon show of initiative - had not only figured out how to head Kaoru off, but succeeded in bringing her back, and not even kicking and screaming.

"It's a matter of principle," she said. "I don't want young people sharing a bed in my house before marriage."

"Well, I plan on marrying Kaoru."

Yuzuha pressed her fingers to the knot between her eyebrows, closing her eyes for a spell and breathing out audibly.

"No, I know I can't legally, but I still want her to be my companion for life. I don't want anybody else."

"Hikaru, I think it's a little early to be making such decisions."

"Why? I don't think so. Some people get engaged in high school." He cocked his head a bit, arms still tight around Kaoru over the blanket.

"That's different - your classmates who are engaged are probably headed into arranged marriages, and it's not even a fact that all of them will happen. If you want Kaoru to be your… Well, you need to be in a place where you can show you can take care of her, and get her a nice engagement ring at least."

"I can get her a nice ring."

"Oh, really? With what money?" Yuzuha raised a finely penciled eyebrow.

Hikaru's shoulders drooped. That much was true. His allowance was still being revoked, and all his accounts had been frozen with no hint of when he would be able to use them again. He had thought about getting a part time job, but found out Ouran did not allow it - and that was quite apart from the fact that he did not know how to do anything.

"Alright, Mister, up," Yuzuha repeated. "I think Kaoru needs a some space after everything she's been through."

Hikaru sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed with a groan.

…

When Yuzuha returned to her study, a maid named Izumi had just finished dusting off a set of glass figurines on one of the shelves that was free of books.

"I'm almost finished, ma'am," she said. "I'm sorry it took so long."

"No, that's alright, Izumi, take your time."

The maid gave a small bow and turned around, picking up her duster to move on to the draperies.

Yuzuha opened a fresh set of portfolios with the senior designers' contributions to the upcoming collection and sat down at her desk.

"It was certainly a shame to lose Toroko so abruptly," she mused, taking up a red pen. "I hope you haven't had your hands too full as a result?"

"Not at all, ma'am."

"Good. We should find a replacement soon."

A few moments passed in silence, except for the rhythmic swish of the duster and Yuzuha's pen making slash after slash.

"You know, Izumi, it's a shame," she said. There was no point in denying it - the staff found out things faster than she and Yuzuke did most days. "But what I really don't understand is - Toroko KNOWS her name is going to be mud after what she'd done, quite apart from what happened with Hikaru. I understand one might not want to make a career out of being a maid. But why throw away four perfectly good years of your life, not to mention a good reference?"

The only explanation she had gleaned so far - from the whisper of two other maids - was that Toroko had been in love, or thought she was, and had wanted to hurt Hikaru after he "ended" it by doing what she could to get rid of Kaoru. But she could not be sure how reliable that information was.

"Oh, well, you know," Izumi replied. "A girl her age can still find a good match and never have to work again."

"Hm. Is that so?"

"Well, she's got a boyfriend, anyway."

"Serious?"

"I think so. In fact, I think he asked her a little while ago. Good family, too."

"Well, that's good, then."

And it was even better that Izumi was always so chatty. Yuzuha was still considering whether or not to press charges, but a little more digging, and she would find out exactly who said boyfriend was - at which point his family would be very interested to know that he was about to marry a statutory rapist.

…

The following day, Yuzuha and Kaoru met with Uncle Kenji, and made an offer to invest in Suzumiya Fragrances, making it a subsidiary of Hitachiin. Yuzuha claimed that she had been thinking of expanding her perfume line, and Uncle Kenji, though saved from admitting that Suzumiya Frangrances was worth nearly as much as he owed in debts, hemmed and hawed for a long time, appealing to the company's history which he felt would be tainted by going corporate. Yuzuha assured him that the company vision would be respected, especially if Kaoru were to be involved in running both enterprises one day.

And so, when the hearing was resumed on Monday, Uncle Kenji got up and in a show of pathos inconsistent with his phlegmatic demeanor declared that he no longer wished to oppose anything. Then Kaoru got on the stand, delivering a misty-eyed speech about how a few weeks ago she had found both a brother and a best friend, and could not believe that someone would sully their relationship that way. She even dodged, successfully, a barrage of questions that included "what's your boyfriend's name?" by answering "I don't have one." And then Hikaru gave his testimony - which Kaoru did not know how she sat through - describing his relationship with Toroko, whereas Hiromi Kanagawa made a stellar effort to show that the maid's evidence was at best circumstantial. At that point, there was no one else - and no surveillance camera footage - to corroborate the testimony, so the case devolved into a he-said she-said, and the judge was almost too happy to rule in favor of the Hitachiins.

The only speck of trouble came afterwards. The press had gotten wind of the case, and while Yuzuha's efforts were enough to keep them out of the hearing room, as soon as Hikaru and Kaoru emerged from the double doors they were mobbed by a crowd of photographers shouting,

"Kaoru, Kaoru, Kaoru, what's your last name?"

Hikaru squeezed her hand and motioned that she smile, for there was nothing else to be done.

"A Kaoru by any other name will smell as sweet," he declared.


	24. Making Money

It was an ordinary afternoon at the Host Club - just after 3 o'clock but before the guests were due to arrive, and they had put aside planning their Les Mis cosplay, having reached a stalemate in the role assignments. It had been decided fairly painlessly that Tamaki was a natural Enjolras, Mori would make a great Jean Valjean, Honey was a born Gavroche, and Kyouya was perfectly cut out to be Inspector Javert. But the twins' casting proved more problematic, as making them Marius and Cosette would play up the soul mate angle, whereas making them be Monsieur and Madame Thernadier would play up the comedic angle. And Kaoru had refused point-blank to be Eponine, not wanting to be friendzoned even in a roleplay, at which point the twins devolved into debating who made a better Thernadier: Matt Lucas with his fluorescent yellow socks - or Sasha Baron Cohen with the authentic french accent. As a consequence, Tamaki finally declared that they it was best they all sleep on it, and they settled to enjoy a cup of choice peruvian coffee apiece.

"So there we were, in Okinawa," Tamaki was saying, taking a sip with his pinkie extended, "And I found this shisa figuirine on the beach. And back then I was such an idiot, I couldn't tell a shisa from a a namahage."

"With all due respect, Boss," said Hikaru, "You're still an idiot. And I STILL don't think you'd be able to tell a shisa from a namahage." He draped his arm over the back of the couch he and Kaoru occupied, and while it was a poor substitute for hugging her, he generally dialed back the displays of affection when they socialized with other hosts. That way, she focus on forming her own friendships with the others.

With Tamaki, it was already going swimmingly. The other day, he had declared he wanted to be her daddy, at which point Hikaru countered that if anyone was to be Kaoru's daddy it was him, because at least he was biologically related. Then Kaoru shut them both down with a frosty tirade to the tune of: "I had one father. His name was Eiji Suzumiya. He taught me to ride a bike and took me to Tokyo Disney, and neither of you nasty perverts are worth his spit, you got me?" At that point, all three knew they would be best friends for life.

As such, Hikaru felt perfectly at ease in leaving Kaoru laughing uproariously with Tamaki when he saw Kyouya walk in. In fact, he got up and made a beeline for his usual table before the other had even sat down.

"Uh, Kyouya-senpai, do you have a second?"

"For you, Hikaru, two seconds," replied Kyouya, barely glancing up.

"Uh, okay." Hikaru lowered himself into the chair opposite as Kyouya moved his laptop aside. "The thing is… I need to make some money."

"Money?" If the older boy was surprised, only his eyebrows showed it. "Why do you need to make money, Hikaru? Don't your parents give you an allowance?"

"I… need more than they give me. But I also don't know if it would be right to use my parents' money."

Kyouya narrowed his eyes.

"Hikaru, are you in some sort of trouble?"

Hikaru sighed. Of course - it made sense that Kyoya would think that. After all, it was all he could do to conceal his nervousness, and he was not doing very well. His throat was dry, and his voice had grown raspy, and he ended up having to sit on his hands to keep from wringing them.

"No. I just…" He glanced around to ascertain that Honey and Mori were out of earshot and Kaoru and Tamaki were still engrossed in conversation. "Look, I just want to buy something, but it needs to be with money I made myself, sort of as a statement."

Hikaru watched his friend, his teeth digging into his lower lip, and after a moment Kyouya's expression turned into one he commonly wore when his gears were turning. Hikaru could only hope were turning in the direction of helping him, and not in that of figuring out his purpose.

"How much money are we talking, exactly?"

"About 1,000,000 yen."

"Hmm." Kyouya picked up his pencil and tapped it on his pad.

"I mean, you make money with the Host Club, right?" Hikaru ventured, desperately. "How do you do that? Can I get in on some of that?"

"Theoretically, yes, I do, but the Host Club is a nonprofit organization. All the money goes into a common tin and gets spent on things that benefit everyone. If I started paying you, I'd have to compensate all the other hosts too. But different hosts are requested at different frequencies and bring in different amounts of revenue, so I'd have to pay everyone proportionally. After all, giving the same salary to a Tamaki, who gets 70% of all requests, and to Honey, who fills a very specialized niche, would not make much sense. But if different people get compensated differently, that might create the wrong kind of competition."

Hikaru sank lower in his chair. It seemed Kyouya was more interested in pontificating on the merits of the Host Club business model than in helping after all.

The Shadow King doodled in the margin of his pad, his eyebrows tended.

"I think I may have an idea, though," he said.

Hikaru sat up.

"One way to raise money for - anything really is to hold a benefit auction." Kyouya smiled with just the corners of his mouth at Hikaru's none-too-hopeful expression. "Essentially, you get people to donate things. They can donate anything: art, goods, services - maybe an all-inclusive trip, a photo shoot, or a series of lessons with a famous master. And then you auction them off. It's good publicity for the donors, and people like to give to a good cause when they get something out of it too."

"But…" Hikaru still looked a touch flattened. Kyouya was only a year older, but the things he knew never failed to make him feel like an ignoramus. "Who'd want to donate to me?"

"Well, they won't be donating to you directly," Kyoya squinted slightly, suddenly looking almost conspiratorial. "Tamaki was just thinking the Host Club should hold a dance, and we can have the benefit then. We can say that the proceeds will go to the club, but if you do the legwork in soliciting donations, I can compensate you on the order of, oh, ten percent of the proceeds."

"Ten percent?!"

"Yes, ten percent."

"But -"

"You still owe me for that ambulance, don't forget."

"Oh, come on! How much gas did we even use? And we returned it!"

"That's not the point. It's the conspiracy that has a price. Do you know how many laws we broke?"

Hikaru gave an exasperated sigh, slumping back into his chair.

"Okay," he said after a moment. Ten percent was not much, but it was a start, and Kyouya's demeanor had never been one that invited bartering. "So how do I get people to donate?"

"Ah, that's my favorite part." Kyouya's smile grew wider. "You open up your telephone directory - or better yet, that of your parents - and start contacting people. The more the better. Your mom's a designer, right? She ought to know a lot of artsy types. If they're up and coming, tell them that donating to a benefit at Ouran is a great way to gain exposure among the rich and powerful. If someone's more established, find a way to sell Ouran Academy as a new market. Something along the lines of adolescents having more agency and more money to burn than ever."

Hikaru chewed the insides of his cheeks. He was still unsure what to make of the whole thing, and had trouble envisioning it coming together. Yet while Kyouya was business sense incarnate he was still only human, and if he had done it before, how hard could it be?

"It's what they call social capital," Kyouya added with a smile that was almost a grin. "Social connections are worth money in a very real way. You just have to play your cards right. That's half of what real business people do."

Hikaru nodded. When Kyouya put it that way, he could not help but agree. After all, the point of raising money for Kaoru's ring was to prove he was an adult, and that had it in him to run the family business and provide for her.

"Okay," he smiled back, trying his best to mirror Kyoya's cultivated enthusiasm. If he did not feel confident just yet, faking it until he made it would have to do. "I'll give it a shot. We all have to start somewhere."

…

"Hika-chan, it's beautiful."

The Host Club was in full assembly, and staring with ill-concealed admiration at the large porcelain vase in the middle of the music room. The piece was displayed atop of a carved marble stand, and looked like it could fit a small - and athletic - human being inside.

"Yeah, how in the world did you get your hands on something like THAT?" - if Honey's small voice was all awe, Tamaki's incredulity was splattered all over his face in bold, bright colors.

Hikaru was admiring the fruit of his labors too, but from a shorter distance - with folded arms and an almost excessively pleased grin.

"It's authentic Ming. I've even got the documents. And NO, I didn't have to talk to any Yakuza to get it, in case you were wondering."

Kyouya said nothing and shot Hikaru a cool, benevolent smile as he jotted something in his notepad. Kaoru came up to her twin and put her hand on his shoulder - and his heart kicked up a flutter as she tugged at his collar with a smile that slipped into her eyes. She did not know it was all for her - but she would soon enough. The thought made a shiver run down Hikaru's spine, and his knees nearly buckled as he imagined Kaoru's elfin figure clad in various shades of white.

"It's lovely, Hikaru, but are you sure it's going to be okay standing there in the middle of the floor like that?" she asked. "Maybe we should find a safer spot for it."

"Kaoru has a point," Kyouya said as Hikaru's mind descended back to earth. "We should get a museum rope, too."

But before Hikaru could reply, the door of the Music Room creaked open and all six of them turned in practiced unison to face the visitor.

"Welcome!" they all cried, brilliant Host Club smiles at the ready.

The being on the doorstep was of indeterminate gender, with hair cropped into a short bowl-cut, thick glasses that obscured the eyes, a baggy sweater, and pants the bubbled at the knees. It was not their usual sort of visitor, but it took Tamaki no time at all to recover his storied prince charming act.

"Well-well, our first guest of the day!" he cried, sweeping up to the visitor and taking them by the hand. "And what might be your name, sir - or madam?"

"Uh… I think I'm in the wrong place. I was just looking for a place to study," the visitor stammered, pulling away from Tamaki as if he bore a contagious virus.

"Hikaru, Kaoru, isn't that the new Honor Student in your class?" asked Kyouya, adjusting his glasses to get a better look at the newcomer.

"You know, you're right," replied Hikaru.

"But we don't know him very well," added Kaoru. "He doesn't talk much."

"And, frankly," said Hikaru, "The fact that I turned out to have a long-lost twin made such a splash that everyone's forgotten the other newbie. Not that I blame them - double trouble's far more exciting than double honors."


	25. Pumpkin

"Hikaru, can we talk?"

The twins had just reached a breaking point in their homework. Eight months had passed since they officially became an item, and many things had changed - the majority for the better.

They had acquired a new friend - Haruhi - and the Host club had acquired a new member. Haruhi was an honor student on scholarship, and had wandered into the Host Club one day by accident, only to knock over the expensive vase Hikaru had found for the auction. Since Haruhi had no money to pay them back, she was contracted as the Host Club's "dog," and at first, Hikaru had been livid with her. Indeed, he had barely hidden the fact, forcing her to run errand after embarrassing errand until a fair bit of gentle nagging from Kaoru finally put a stop to it.

But it wasn't as if Kaoru, too, had not had her share of fun a Haruhi's expense. When they found out the newbie was a girl, Kaoru had convinced the Host Club - via a series of pointed elbow-jabs - not to reveal her own gender, much less her commoner origins. Her reason, she claimed, was wanting to see how long it would take the honor student to figure it out. The other reason, which she never told anyone, was that she worried Haruhi would resent her, since the former had won her scholarship fair and square, while Kaoru got in on connections. But in the end, Kaoru's fears proved unfounded. Haruhi turned out to be the least judgmental person she ever met, and the twins became fast friends with her once once she became a host on her own right and Hikaru got firm proof that he would be getting his money back.

They had also gotten a pet. In fact, Hikaru was a very attentive boyfriend. When Yuzuha took away his credit card and froze his expense accounts, he quickly - and tragically - realized how inconvenient it was to have a girlfriend but no income.

"You sly fox," Yuzuke had chuckled, complementing his wife's disciplinary skills one night. "Divide and conquer - is that the plan?"

Indeed, within a week of cutting off Hikaru's cash flow, Yuzuha had issued Kaoru her own credit card, with strict instructions that she wanted to see it used.

"Perhaps," Yuzuha had shrugged her shoulders, white as the snows of Fuji-san. "At any rate, it'll be a test. If there are any cracks, they will show pretty quickly. And anyway, I thought it was about time Hikaru learned the value of a Yen - and Kaoru did too, though obviously she warrants a different approach."

At first, Hikaru did what he could. He sold all his video games and baseball cards. Then he risked several limbs swiping a limited edition purse from his mother's trunk show, and auctioned it off on EBay (tm). But soon he realized that selling his and other people's belongings - at a loss as often as at a profit - was not a sustainable solution. At any rate, what he made was a pittance compared to what he was used to, so he ended up asking Kyouya for help, and that might have solved the problem had the unhappy circumstance with the vase not delayed the payoff.

Still, by his and Kaoru's birthday, he had amassed enough to buy her a gift of some significance. Kaoru had mentioned that she always wanted a dog, but mom had been deathly afraid while dad was allergic. So after a due amount of groveling before Yuzuha, Hikaru procured a two-month-old Shiba puppy from a breeder. On the day of their birthday, the staff had just finished singing Happy Birthday in full assembly, the twins had blown out their candles, and Hikaru had gotten through smiling politely while unwrapping the collected works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - when the plates were finally cleared and Hikaru took Kaoru by the hand, telling her with a significant look that he also had a present for her, outside. He then whipped out a bandana from his pocket, tied it around her eyes, and led her to the patio.

Kaoru waited for a few moments, then heard, "Oh, crap on a crock... I'll be right back" - at which point she got the distinct feeling that Hikaru had disappeared from her side.

Kaoru had not know it yet, but the reason for Hikaru's sudden departure was that the dog, who had been safely in a pen erected just for that occasion, had somehow been emancipated, and was running in circles in the middle of the lawn.

At first, Hikaru had thought catching a dog was a no-brainer. After all, all he had to do was estimate its trajectory - which looked predictable enough - and head it off. But no cigar - the dog seemed to have figured out that Hikaru was onto him, and took off in a beeline for the bushes. The bushes, as luck would have it, were Noda's prize roses - the thorns as prized as the blooms themselves. So by the time Hikaru emerged not only did he have the gardener on his tail - who turned out to have a pitchfork after all - but his clothes were nearly sliced into ribbons and his knees thoroughly muddied. The dog, however, was little worse for wear, and continued to the house with a gleeful barking.

In the end, Hikaru spent a good twenty minutes chasing Kaoru's gift throughout the house, and finally caught it - but not before the dog had jumped headlong into a bath, dousing two maids who were cleaning the bathroom, overturned a vase that was slightly less expensive than the one Haruhi broke, and trailed mud all over the new carpet. When Hikaru finally presented the puppy to Kaoru, it was wrapped in a towel - for having secured the little beast Hikaru had the good sense to take him to the kitchen and wash his paws off. And Kaoru had smiled and exploded into gleeful laughter interspersed with baby-talk when she saw it, and had not minded at all that the dog was wet. In fact, the only thing that caused her some consternation was the disgruntled line of household staff tapping their feet and clearing their throats across the patio.

The first day in the puppy's life at the Hitachiin house was no anomaly, either. Indeed, he turned out to be a menace if there ever was one, and had been ripping through Kaoru's room with some regularity ever since. At first, she had even considered naming him "Godzilla," "Little Devil," or "Hikaru," but settled on "Pumpkin" because of his color, and the twins began taking him out to the park to help him mellow out a bit. Whenever they went, Kaoru dressed in her trademark pleated skirt, pink sweater, and Mary Jane shoes. At first, Hikaru worried it would be a problem if they ran into anyone they knew, but the first time it happened, Kaoru handled the situation very elegantly.

"We're cosplaying," she said to an the incredulous classmate who had stopped to say hello. "We're pretending to be a happy couple walking their dog," she added, beaming. The classmate seemed to take her at her word - and quickly said goodbye, but then showed up at the Host Club the following day and had since become a regular.

Indeed, ever since Kaoru became a host at school, she had been getting progressively girlier in her "off-time." By summer, she wore pastels and skirts almost exclusively - and, much to Hikaru's joy, even the occasional thong. ("The better to lift the skirt and touch, m'dear" - Kaoru had said, and Hikaru had whole-heartedly agreed in word and in deed). She also put cute barrettes in her hair, and decorated her room with floral wall appliques and faux-victorian curiosities. Hikaru loved the room, not the least because it showed a side of Kaoru only he got to see. And it was in that room that they usually parked themselves for a number of hours each day doing their homework, talking about life, and taking the occasional break to kiss and then some on the floor so the maids would not see them. And it was in that room that they found themselves that evening, poring over laptops and books as Pumpkin lay at Kaoru's feet, growling and trying to shake the life out of a chew-toy.

"Yes, my lady?" - Hikaru asked, raising his eyebrows and putting down his pen - quite deliberately.

"Hikaru," said Kaoru solemnly, "I'm tired of canoodling in dark corners like we're training for the quickie Olympics. I mean, I understand we've got limitations, what with the rules at home and how busy things are in school, but… You know."

She did not need to explain further. Hikaru put his hand on hers.

"I know." He looked into her eyes. "And I'm sorry. I wish we could have more time for just the two of us too. But it's only a few weeks until winter vacation in Hokkaido." He tried to smile - for the Host Club had plans to go to Sapporo, and bathe in the natural wonder that was open-air hot springs and snow-covered mountains.

"Yeah, I know. But it's not that…" She bit her lip and averted her eyes. "You see, even when we're off somewhere with our friends and we DO have some, ehm, us-time, there's still the other thing…"

Usually, the only time the twins got to share a room was when they were away with their friends ,and there was little their parents could do about it except instill a small amount of guilt by telling them to "make good choices." But one unfortunate side effect of how rarely they got to be truly alone was that when they WERE, Hikaru threw himself on Kaoru as soon as the door shut and come dangerously close to mauling her as they hit home run after home run. The first time it happened, in Okinawa, Kaoru got rug burns so bad that the problem of her going topless on the beach was solved quite elegantly. She claimed that she had gotten an allergic reaction to something, and that the princesses would have to enjoy only one shirtless Hitachiin twin. She was also able to write it off as due excitement, as it was their first weekend away together. But when the same thing happened in Karanizawa - with the added effect of breaking the bed and keeping half the inn awake all night, Kaoru finally put her foot down. In fact, the twins did not like to talk about Karanizawa. In the morning, Kaoru somehow ended up on the floor, and when she woke she was not happy. "First you use me like a whore, then you literally kick me out of bed. NO, THANK YOU," she said screamed. She then declared her and Hikaru on a break, and proceeded to ask out Haruhi, leaving Hikaru a jealous mess for the rest of the day.

"I mean, I just miss the way it was the first time. Slow and…" Tentative, and loving, and gentle. None of this blitzkrieg business now that I'm all yours and there's no more winning over to be done. You're so eager that you fire five bullets in me, three minutes apiece, and then fall asleep like the dead.

But she could not very well say THAT much.

"Oh, dear." Hikaru looked a little shaken. "I'm sorry, Kaoru. I had no idea you weren't… happy. I mean, in Karanizawa, I thought it was because I kicked you out of bed - which I'm still really sorry for, by the way."

"I'm not unhappy, Hikaru." Kaoru smiled. "I just feel like…" She lowered her head and if she had ears, they might have drooped right then. "I just feel it could be more… romantic."

"Romantic? Well! That I can do." Hikaru beamed. "How about this - we tell our parents that our friends are leaving one day early, and instead of going to Hokkaido, we go to a hotel. A really nice hotel."

"A hotel? Why?"

"You know. For no other reason than to go to a hotel and spend the night not-talking. It'll be Christmas, after all."

"Well, gee, I don't know about that." Kaoru pursed her lips.

"No?" Hikaru made a show of looking dejected.

"I mean, I'm just not sure…"

Hikaru sighed. "Oh, I see how it is. We have a dog together, but you don't want to spend Christmas with me. That hurts, Kaoru. Hurts right here." He patted his chest.

"Aw, come on, Hikaru." Kaoru smiled, softening. "We can still do the Christmas thing. Just a more PG one, like watch 'Love, Actually' or something. That way, there'll still be something to look forward to."

She reached out and pressed her hand over his, and he looked up and smiled as well, coming alive a bit.

"But seriously," she added. "A little slower, that's all I ask. So I can actually feel something?"


	26. Holiday in Hokkaido

Kyouya had spent the last few months feeling like a taut violin string. His infatuation with Kaoru had not gone anywhere. In fact, it got worse, and he was doubting whether he could call it infatuation anymore. To add insult to injury, during any kind of downtime the twins would start kissing and touching each other - and Kaoru had a penchant for climbing into Hikaru's lap. As a consequence, if Tamaki did not yell at them to knock it off (which only happened when he was in a bad mood), most days Kyouya felt less than enthused to be alive.

Nonetheless, Kaoru seemed happy, and going after his friend's woman was against Kyouya's principles. For that reason, he resolved to burrow like a stingray in the sand and to wait and watch. It would have to run its course eventually. After all, he had learned that the twins had gotten involved very quickly, and common wisdom suggested that what caught fire fastest was also the fastest to burn out. That was why he would be there. To catch her when she fell, and then...

He did what he could to stall, of course. When Hikaru came to him asking for money, he suspected it had something to do with Kaoru, and that the twins being punished at home for their relationship. To avoid looking suspicious, he had agreed to help, though he gave Hikaru a job he thought required more finesse than the twin had, and offered him only a small commission. But he had not suspected THAT, and spent the next few days after he found out kicking himself repeatedly for having been an unwitting accomplice. In retrospect, it made some sense - Hikaru marched to the beat of his own drummer, considered himself the exception to every rule, and his favorite argument was that something was impossible only because it had not happened YET. But from the moment Hikaru gathered all the hosts besides Kaoru to tell them, it was all Kyouya could do to to keep from going off the rails. His only hope was that Kaoru would have the good sense to say no, and if she didn't, that in a few years both would wake up and realize it was madness.

It was a few days after Christmas, and the Host Club had occupied a quaint little ryokan** in the mountains. The owner was someone Kyouya's family knew, so the hosts had the place to themselves. During the day, there was skiing on the nearby slopes in the mountains, and in the evenings there was much merry-making around the table and soaking in the springs that were warm enough to allow outdoor bathing even in winter. To boot, they opened up to a breathtaking view of the mountains. Indeed, only if you looked very carefully could you see, in the distance, a collection of twinkling lights that was faraway Sapporo. Other than that, the earth lay under a thick blanket of snow that looked like it stretched until the end of the world, for the place was a region historically known as "Snow Country," and was the snowiest for that latitude in the world.

(**A traditional Japanese inn, often found in the countryside and near hot springs, or onsen.)

Kaoru had very quickly picked up snowboarding. So quickly, in fact, that even Kyouya was impressed, and had begun to wonder if they had a prodigy athlete in their midst after all. In fact, while Haruhi - who had never skied either - was still mastering pizza for stop and french fries for go, Kaoru was already doing jumps, and shredding the snow with enviable grace and dexterity. The only part that was a shame was that so often she was moving so fast that he could not see her, and the only way to tell that she was not Hikaru was that she never attempted anything too rash, and never landed flat on her face for the trouble.

And Kyouya liked to see her because he Liked to Watch. Even though they talked enough and Kaoru's analysis of things always interested him, talking meant putting pressure on himself, and constantly making sure he did not do anything that might scare her. He also had to be careful not to make his feelings known, and not cause a rift in the friend group. And so he watched. He even came to enjoy, masochistically enough, the little shows the twins always put on, thinking about how he could - and someday would - do better. And he was certainly enjoying what he got to see then, hiding out behind a rock with the rest of the hosts, for Kaoru only ever bathed with Hikaru or Haruhi, and it was only because of Hikaru's plan that night that there would be an exception.

Kaoru was lying against the rocks, evidently relishing the cool air on her chest as much as she enjoyed not having to care who was appraising and what they would think. The sky was and the twins were laughing, with steam coming from both the hot water and their mouths.

"You know what's funny?" Kaoru was saying, having recovered from her fifteenth paroxysm of laughter that hour.

"What's funny?"

"The Hikaru. Take any name, and change it to Hikaru, and it sounds a thousand times funnier."

"Ah." She unhooked her elbows from the rock, and he caught her as she slipped down. "How do you figure?"

"Well, it just sounds like something you'd say in surprise and consternation. I mean, okay, story time. I was reading my shit-you-can't-make-up website on the plane while you were sleeping, and I came upon a story." Kaoru, in her efforts to become fluent, had taken up reading the internet in French, and came upon a story site where the Gauls liked to vent about the Kafkaesque nature of existence. Most stories, allegedly, were true, and part of extended arguments about the human condition. As a result, Kaoru had started calling it the shit-you-can't-make-up website. "And the story was about a girl who got a new phone number. The first night she had it, she got a call at about three in the morning and the voice on the other end of the line is like, 'HIKARU, where the hell are you?!' "

Hikaru sporfled.

"Now, obviously his name wasn't Hikaru, because this is France, but let's pretend. Anyway, she's like, 'I don't know any Hikaru, you've got the wrong number." Kaoru chuckled. "But then, in the morning, she gets another call, and it's Hikaru's wife."

"Oh, so this Hikaru's got a wife?"

"Yes. And this wife starts screaming at her, because OBVIOUSLY if she's a girl she's got to be Hikaru's secret mistress."

"Oh noo…" Hikaru's chest began to shake, and he covered his mouth with his hands.

"So long story short, over the course of the next MONTH, this girl got calls every day from Hikaru's screaming wife, his screaming kids, and a host of other people trying to figure out where he was and who the new proprietor of the phone was."

"Did they ever find Hikaru?"

"No, I don't think they did. I think the mob got him, to be honest."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong." Hikaru laughed and waded closer to her, pulling her into a hug. "Because I'm pretty sure I know where he is. He ran off with his long lost twin and they started a perverse family. In Japan."

Kaoru laughed, the stars in her eyes twinkling.

"You know I love you, right?"

"No, I don't know," she laughed again as he took her hands and spun her around. "How much do you love me?"

"Enough to marry you."

"Oh, very funny."

"No, I'm serious." He stopped, and pulled the small towel off his head, rummaging through the folds.

"We can't get married. You're my biological brother."

"Oh, I know. But we can still have a wedding and stay together forever." He pulled something out and held it up, and in the dim light - from the stars and the light spilling out of a set of double doors - Kaoru realized it was a ring.

And not just any ring. A ring with a sizable diamond in the middle, and many smaller ones spilling down the sides.

For a second, Kaoru - although she had grown much more forthright in the past few months - was speechless.

"H-hikaru…" She finally stuttered, the sound of his name doing ironic justice to her earlier description of it.

"I want you to be my life's companion, Kaoru," Hikaru said firmly. "I know we're only sixteen, but I know what I want. I love you, and I don't think time is going to change what we have - so please marry me?"

Kaoru could not believe what she was hearing. She wondered if she had gone insane.

"H-hikaru, are you cra- " She snatched the ring out of his hand, and peered at it.

It was definitely a real ring. Not a figment of her imagination and definitely, definitely not a piece of costume jewelry. Except what on earth was he thinking?! Supposing, even, that he was alright with keeping his partner out of the public eye for the rest of his life - many people did, certainly, like those who loved members of the same sex, or whose relationships were taboo for some other reason… But what did they really know, at their age, about marriage? Not that she had ever envisioned that it might end between them - she had not wanted to; she was too happy… But making that sort of commitment too early would make it that much harder to heal if things went awry.

The only thing to be done was to stall, and to try to gauge how well he had even thought it through, and hope it would not hurt him too much.

"How did you get this?" she asked, tentatively. "This has to -" The raised the ring up, squinting at it in the light.

"I got a job."

"A job? When?"

"I've been working for Kyouya." Hikaru looked down sheepishly, suddenly turning even redder than the hot spring had made him. "All the stuff we've auctioned off? I'm the one who found it, so I've been getting a cut. And the custom-made club merchandise. I came up with a lot of it. And the website - I made it."

Kaoru bit her lip. It was true that Hikaru had had his cash flow revoked, but still somehow managed to take her out to nice meals, and buy her presents, and show her a great deal of what Tokyo had to offer to the under-20 crowd. She had therefore suspected that he had found a way around his handicap, but had been hesitant to ask how, as she had been taught it was rude to inquire about money. All she knew was that Hikaru locked himself away in the study for an hour every day, but she had assumed he had been doing something for Yuzuha, perhaps as a way of getting her to slacken her restrictions.

"I wanted to show that I could provide for you, because all my accounts are still frozen." Hikaru looked like he had begun to wring his hands under the water. "But I guess that's just as well, because what if something happens and our company goes under? I want you to still live comfortably, and this is just a way of picking up some more universally applicable skills."

"What makes you think our company's going to go under?"

"Well, you know…" Hikaru looked up, from under his eyebrows, and fumbled with his towel. Despite her efforts to sound kind and not to make her questions seem accusatory, she looked like he was about to throw up, having probably jumped to the conclusion that she was rejecting him. She felt almost guilty, and wanted to come and hug him, but willed herself to keep her distance. "I mean - mom's not going to last forever," he went on. "And who the hell knows if I can do what she does. I'm not even sure if I want to try. She's, like, a visionary or whatever, and the most I can do is judge if something slims a model's figure."

In fact, it was getting harder and harder to hide the fact that his zeal for his mother's work was only equal to his love for the pretty models, but with Kaoru in the picture even that had petered out.

"You don't have to do what she does if you don't want to."

"Yes, I do. I'm her son, aren't I? Even if she did not give birth to me."

"And I'm her daughter. Look, Hikaru, your mom saw what I did with my room and with those dresses for the winter gala, and before we left she asked me if I wanted to train as her successor. I've just been waiting for the right moment to talk to you about. So you don't need to worry. Designing is something you should do because you want to and because you love it. And I do."

Hikaru did not know what to think. Here, he had been trying to surprise her by revealing how he had become more responsible, so he could win her over, and make her think better of him than she had done before. And she have gone and one-upped him. It should have made him feel terrible, if not robbed in the literal sense of the word, but, surprisingly, it did not. In fact, he might have felt like a prisoner liberated from jail - if not for the small matter that she still had not answered his question…

"And you can help me if you want - or not," Kaoru added. "You can go off and do whatever it is you decide you like. If you did all you say you did for Kyouya, those really are important skills, and they'll come in handy."

"Y-you mean that, Kaoru?" He took a step toward her, struggling to chase away the other, crushing thought - that she was ignoring the other issue on purpose, as if to suggest that it was too idiotic to warrant comment. And she was probably right, too, for he had jumped the gun and would fall on his face as always…

"Of course," she said. "I think you're very capable, but you've been too constrained, and unhappy because you feel like you've living in Yuzuha's debt. But you don't have to feel that way anymore. You can take what she gave you, and use it to honor her in other ways."

"S-so you don't think I'm just some stupid idiot who turns everything he touches to shit?"

"No, I don't." She smirked. "And even if I did, I wouldn't say it, because I have a feeling you've been called an idiot too many times in your life."

She had not wanted to say it right away - not wanting to praise him TOO much - but if he had truly not taken a dime from Yuzuha all those months, that put him head and shoulders above many kids at Ouran. Did it mean he would make something of himself one day? It was hard to know, especially since - at their level, which Kaoru still struggled to wrap her head around - the things he was stripped of, and had regained, basically amounted to pocket money. But he certainly seemed motivated enough. And while she still felt squeamish using money as a way of gauging maturity, it was also true that over the past few months even Hikaru's grades had improved, and there had been far fewer disasters caused by his lack of foresight. Indeed the incident with Pumpkin was probably the worst of it - but, speaking of Pumpkin, her brother had a good deal in common with the dog. He had far too much energy, and, together with his desire to provide for her, freeing him to find his own path in life would help him make better use of it.

"Kaoru…" Hikaru had been looking at her, and seemed ready to cry.

"And I think I will marry you," she said, putting the ring on her finger and admiring it. Even in the low light, it shone so bright it might have been lit from within. "I want to keep you by my side, so I can keep an eye on you."

…

"Kyouya, are you sure we should be watching this?" The Shadow King heard Tamaki's voice over his shoulder. "I really don't think he's going to give us the signal any time soon."

"Yeah, maybe we should go just inside," Haruhi's voice added from the darkness of a grotto. "Maybe set up a banner or something instead -"

"Haruhi?! You're here too?! I thought I told you to go back - little girls shouldn't see this kind of thing!" Tamaki exclaimed. - for he had a crush on Haruhi that was obvious to everyone except him, and manifested as a perverse obsession with pretending to be her daddy.

"Shush!" - hissed Honey - "Kao-chan and Hika-chan are gonna hear us!"

"I don't care if they hear us! Little girls shouldn't see -"

"Alright, we're going in," snapped Kyouya.

"NOW?!" Tamaki gasped. "But they're -"

"It doesn't matter - I can't work in these conditions, so let's just get it over with."

The truth was, ever since Kyouya spied Kaoru admiring her ring and putting it on, to add insult to violent disappointment Hikaru had been moving in on her with the speed of summer lightning. Indeed, it was getting to be more than even the Master of Duplicity could stand, for Hikaru had Kaoru pressed up against a rock, and though most of their bodies were submerged he had begun to move in a suspiciously rhythmic pattern. At the same time, Kaoru seemed to have given up her footing, had been lifted a bit higher up, and was arching her back as both breathed so heavily that the gasps carried all too easily across the water. Not that hearing them was even necessary. The mere sight of Kaoru's sexless upper body, white as a chrysalis, and her head thrown back, made Kyouya want to forget all his principles.

And that was why, when Kaoru had just about resigned herself to a celebratory coupling right in the spring, that a sudden tsunami had rocked the pool and five scuba-gear clad heads emerged from the waves.

"CONGRATULATIONS!" - they cried.

"D-AHHHHHH!"

Kaoru flailed, and Hikaru dropped her, and for a second she did not know which way was up. When she emerged from the water, gasping and sputtering, all eyes were on her, and nearly everyone was smiling. Haruhi came forward, offered a hand, and pulled her into a tight hug.

Hikaru seemed less than impressed, though.

"Jeez!" He grumbled, flicking the water out of his eyes - for he, too, had suffered an unintended dunking. "What part of 'when I fist-bump the sky' don't you understand? This was NOT how we planned this - I'm sorry, Kaoru."

"I'm sorry, Hikaru," said Kyouya, unruffled as ever. "It was getting late, and cold even around the spring. There's only so much risk I'm willing to take as far as getting sick and ruining the rest of my vacation."

"That's okay," chuckled Kaoru, turning her ring this way and that so Haruhi could admire the setting. "Joke's on you guys. You scared me so badly, I peed in the pool."


	27. Minute Man

Kaoru had agreed - under the condition that he did not stop improving himself. Hikaru did not remember much of what happened next, but he vaguely recalled that it involved the hosts lifting them up and champagne being served all around, though no one present was anywhere close to twenty. Indeed, no one even found it odd that the two of them were only sixteen, and siblings, and planning to get married - so even Hikaru, with his propensity for moral relativism, ended up feeling like he was in bizarro world. And so it was that he did not grow worried until nearly everyone had finally had their fill of merrymaking, and was finally ready to retire to their rooms despite Tamaki's raucous protestations.

In fact, it was only in the shower that Hikaru remembered Kaoru's other condition, and ended up taking more time scrubbing himself down than would have been expected under the circumstances.

Kaoru's other request was that he try to be less of a devil in bed, and try not to finish so quickly - for even though he had reserves he still almost never lasted more than a minute. Part of it, he was convinced, was that he still lost his head whenever he was alone with Kaoru, but she was also right - even he had wondered from time to time if some embarrassing health problem might be the culprit.

To that end, he even tried to satisfy himself alone in the shower first - in hopes that it would help him savor Kaoru a little better. But when he wrapped himself in his hotel kimono and stepped into the bedroom, nothing could have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes.

Kaoru's cheeks were still glowing from the merriment of the evening, and she lay atop the futon covers in nothing but a pair of thigh-highs, in robin's egg blue with ribbons along the seams. A large fan in her hand - the one that wore the ring - covered her middle, her nipples were deep-pink, and her other hand was under the fan doing something quite unambiguous.

How the HELL was he expected to restrain himself when he was presented with THAT? Over the course of the last months, Kaoru gotten much more accustomed to being touched, and her whole body seemed to respond whenever he so much as reached for her. But he still was the one who always took her clothes off, and was the one who whispered and kissed her into a state more comfortable with taking things further. And this - this was like being placed in front of a china shop and being expected to learn to be a goalie.

"Uh…" He was grateful he was wearing a robe, for he had suddenly grown quite lightheaded as the blood rushed to his middle.

Kaoru smiled and shifted one of her legs, pressing her thighs together, but did not remove her hand. Her eyes baked and smouldered in the low lights from the lanterns, and though she had stopped playing sports competitively, her torso and arms were still just as tight, with muscle definition almost uncharacteristic of her sex. Only her hips and thighs might have gotten slightly plumper, but it may have been his imagination - and in any case, it only made him want to spread and ram between them all the more.

"K-kaoru, t-this is new…" He said lamely.

"It is indeed," she replied. "And I was thinking we could do something else that's new, too."

"W-what?"

"I thought we'd pretend I was your brother."

"W-wha?"

"That's right. Just like at the Host Club. But we could take it one step further. A lot of steps further, actually."

She shifted again, propping herself up on her elbow so that she was looking over her shoulder, and he saw, with unspeakable relief, that she was wearing panties after all. Not a thong, either, but a pair more modestly cut - though, Devil Take It, it did not make him feel any less like reaching out and -

"Y-you're serious?" he stammered. "In THERE?"

She nodded.

"But -"

"But what?" She raised an eyebrow, suddenly looking lightyears more mischievous.

"I mean… are you going to be okay? Doesn't it hurt the first time?"

"Gay guys do it all the time - why should this be any different?"

Hikaru had nothing to say to that. He was far too busy staring at Kaoru's shoulder blades, which in the amber light of the room looked like wings trying to sprout through her skin.

"Besides," she went on. "I'm nice and relaxed from the hot water, and from the alcohol. I think right now's as good a time to do it as any. I even have lube, and a condom if you're squeamish." She gestured with her eyes at the low table by the futon, and, indeed, there was a rocket-shaped dispenser and a plastic packet.

"S-so you've been wanting to do this for a while? I mean, i-if you got the stuff?"

"Yep. But I wanted it to be special, and what's more special than tonight?"

Hikaru did not have much to say to that either. His mind was still reeling from the fact that Kaoru was offering herself to him - something she had never done before so explicitly - but she also managed not to look cheap while at it. In fact, the warm porcelain of her limbs made him wonder if he had not accidentally wandered into the wrong reality, and someone like Louis XIV or Tokugawa Ieyasu was not about to march in and order him to stay away from his woman.

"Y-you're so beautiful, I can't stand it," Hikaru managed at last, still feeling more than rooted to the spot.

Kaoru laughed, and the muscles of her shoulders rippled.

"It's 'you're so beautiful, BROTHER.' Now come here and make it so that tomorrow everyone knows exactly what we did."

Hikaru felt like he was going to die - but, oh, to watch that beautiful creature, disrobed, laughing with her back and her shoulders… There was no better way to go. The deep orange glow of the room and the stars above the mountainside were all the light there was, but Kaoru made it seem like no more was necessary. Try as he might, he could not see her as his brother. She was his feisty, sometimes unpredictable, shy little firebrand whom he loved. He was afraid of the word wife still - and no wonder, it had only been a few hours - but in any case, it was not as if they conformed to the traditional model anyway, even though there was no denying that the space beside her was where he wanted to be.

He slowly untied his belt, his hand shaking as if straining at an invisible leash, and walked over to her. He let his robe fall onto the woven tatami mat as he slid over to lie beside her, spooning from behind.

"How do you want to do it?" he whispered breathlessly in her ear, his hand still shaking as he slid it down the curve of her bottom. "On your back? On top? On all fours from behind?" The words dribbled like sex off his lips as he closed his eyes and hoped that imagining himself jackhammering Kaoru until her screams were heard all the way in Sapporo would help him get the desire to actually do so out of his system.

"I'd say lying down from behind. Just like this. But you have to touch me a bit first. I'm not turned on just yet."

"Oh. Really." He reached, his hand quivering, between her thighs as he drew her closer and tried to purge his imagination of railing her against a wall. "But you were touching yourself. And it feels really wet right here."

Kaoru chuckled. "Um, no, for your information my vagina's just cleaning itself. Other than that, I'd much rather go for some sashimi right now."

Hikaru's hand paused.

"Kaoru!" He exclaimed. "You - you said vagina!"

"Yes, and?"

"You never say vagina! Y-you never call it anything but 'down there'!"

"Well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

Hikaru smiled, still incredulous, and pulled her into a tighter embrace, cradling her body with his.

"I'm sorry, Kaoru," he whispered, doing his best to focus on his fingers digging into the tightness her chest and not his own flesh brushing, searing, against the back of her panties. "I just can't see you as a brother. I never saw you as anything but a woman. And a lovely woman - the best there is." In fact, he wanted to say, I look at you and all I want to do is make you pregnant. So I can kiss your belly and know the baby is mine, and feel for a heartbeat and for kicks, and watch your body change, and see you glowing.

But… He could not very well say all that, could he? Because he and Kaoru could not have a baby, not only because it would be a genetic disaster if they tried, but for the simple fact that Kaoru could not carry a pregnancy. If he said it, it would only remind her of that fact, and he could not do that to her. Not when he still could not erase the memory of the day she ended up in a hospital bed with a tube in her chest.

"I - I want to raise a child with you," he whispered, pressing his lips feverishly against her neck. "Maybe pay it forward, adopt someone just like we were adopted. You'd make such a wonderful parent - you're so patient and kind…"

"Okay… okay…" She nodded, though he could not see her face. "We can do that…" Her voice, too, was growing breathless, and her skin had turned even warmer and more golden. "I want to do that too," she whispered. "It's… It's just too bad you'll never be able to hold my hand while I'm pregnant, and say 'hello, pregnant, I'm dad'… I just think that might have been nice."

He searched for the sound of tears in her voice - but no. Kaoru, he realized with some incredulity, had managed to one-up him once again, for there was no wistfulness in her tone, only the tiniest shard of sadness that melted away as quickly as a snowflake on the cheek.

"That's okay," he whispered, pressing his lips behind her ear. "At least you won't get sick in the morning, and won't have to go through any pain, and we can still have a little bundle of joy in our life that isn't just Pumpkin." He kissed her again, from the fuzz of her earlobe to the crook of her shouder, and her skin grew warmer still.

"Do you still want me to do it?" he asked, brushing his hands where her panties stretched over the gap between her buttocks.

"Yes."

"I want to see your face, then…"

"No, I don't want you to see my face when it hurts."

"Please. I just want to see so I know what to do differently. Okay?"

"Okay."

He propped himself up, and reached to the bedside table as he helped her shift to her back, and brought her legs up to his shoulders. As he pushed in, inch by inch, he watched Kaoru breathe deeply in and out, her eyebrows twitching slightly.

It was so warm and tight inside it almost hurt, and the feeling of fullness between his hips became too much to bear very quickly. The milky white flesh - the relief of it, like a snowy landscape. And also its dewy warmth - the overwhelming, undeniable reality of it. And the warmth of the rest of her, too, down to the liquid gold of her eyes. All his. The desire was back. The terrible desire. To mar it, to mess it up, to leave his skin and his fingerprints and his juices all over her. To make her scream his name, to make her legs shake, to make her - But no. He reached for the other wetness between Kaoru's legs and brought his lips to hers, closing his eyes until he felt nothing more than the heat of her body, glowing like a warm oven under his.  
Kaoru. Lovely, beloved Kaoru. The day he first met her, so fearful and shy, when she stepped from beyond the curtain. The way she had told him to get up, and that he was no an idiot. The way she had forgiven him, time and again, for his transgressions - intentional and not - and how he, the moron, had only realized he loved her when he was about to lose her. And finally, the way she had healed his heart, and the way he had healed hers, and the way it now felt like they carried little pieces of each other inside their bodies.

It worked. The angry pressure rolled back from his hips, and he was able to move again without feeling painfully on the verge. Kaoru whimpered just a bit, breathily, but he found a certain spot between her legs and massaged it, and her lips went slack against his as she let out a sigh.  
"C-can you feel it in THERE, too?" Hikaru whispered. "As in, your... vagina?"

She nodded, once and quickly.

"Mmm, maybe I can give it some love too, later - if we go for a second round. Though we'd have to shower, first."

Kaoru smiled and nodded again, her expression still a little pained, and he kissed her lips again, moving his fingers to massage the same spot again. She moaned and her jaw grew slack again as her nails dug into his back, and it began to ache between his legs as if he was about to overflow again.

No. No. This was Kaoru. Beloved, lovely, fragrant, amazing, kind Kaoru. Only a fool guzzled what should have been savored, and as Kaoru had insisted so many times, Hikaru, in spite of it all, was no fool.

…

"Seven minutes! Wow, not bad!" Kaoru laughed, glancing at her cell phone, her cheeks as ruddy as if she had just run a race.

"Seven minutes of HEAVEN!" Hikaru echoed. He was quite spent himself, and lay atop the covers like a starfish, unable to move a muscle except to raise an arm and weakly fist-bump the ceiling. "I guess it pays to think about soccer and basketball while doing it."

"Hey!"

"Soccer and basketball with YOU, Kaoru. And our cute little babies. Playing three on three on that same court where I first put my arm around you, remember?"

She nodded, smiling at the ceiling.

"It was also the first time you told me about your dad. And I still think it's a shame I never got to meet him."

"Yeah," she chuckled, the quick-melting snowflake back in her voice again. "I think he would have liked you."

"Yeah, right. I'll bet he would have told me to stay away from his daughter and chased me out of the house with a fishing rod."

"No, I really think he would have liked you. You're not lazy, and that's what he cares about."

"I WAS lazy, though. Until I met you. And I'm still lazy sometimes."

"Okay. I'll take your word for it." She shifted over to nuzzle him, and her breast brushed softly against his skin and made him feel like a live wire again.

"Hey, Hikaru," she mused into the darkness.

"Mhm-yes, Kaoru-my-love?"

"What color do you think our future together will be?"


	28. The Artistic Type

"Kaoru, are you… cosplaying?" Momoka Kurakano eyed Kaoru - evidently at a loss what to think - from the crown of her bobbed hair, to her tapioca-yellow uniform, to her newly manicured fingers poised over her phone.

It was the first day of the twins' senior year at Ouran, and the Host Club had disbanded, for all but three of the members had graduated, and Haruhi had gone off on an exchange year in America.

"Not at all, Miss Kurakano." Kaoru smiled. "This is me. The real me."

"W-wha?! -"

"I'm a girl, yes. Well, strictly speaking, I am intersex, which means I have the biological characteristics from both sexes due to a developmental aberration. But when I was born they thought I was a girl, and that's how I was raised until puberty, when I noticed something was wrong. That's when I learned how things really were, and decided to live as a boy. But it didn't end up working out as I had hoped, so here I am."

Momoka stared at her, and had begun to look violently perplexed and on the verge of backing away and tripping headlong over a desk. A few other girls, too, had noticed and had approached cautiously.

"And anyway," Kaoru said, cracking a saccharine grin, "Yuzu - I mean, mother decided she's going to start grooming me to take over Hitachiin Designs, and I thought I would be better suited for the job if I got in touch with my feminine side. After all, Hitachiin was started by a woman, and should be carried on by a woman. Hikaru will be helping me, but I'll be in charge of creative process, and the executive side of things."

The faces of the girls who had gathered began to change, slowly but perceptibly enough for Kaoru to be more than sure that the message had been received loud and clear.

"B-But I thought Hikaru was the older one?" said Momoka hesitantly, finally recovering function of her vocal cords.

"You'd think that, but no. I only ever deferred to him because he is the man. But that ends today."

"So what about the brotherly love?" asked another girl with a sheepish smile, breaking rank to get a better look at the way Kaoru altered her uniform to better flatter her androgynous - yet unmistakeably B-cupped - figure.  


"Oh, it's still there." Kaoru gave a small chuckle. "It's just not brotherly anymore."

…

Kaoru Hitachiin, formerly Suzumiya, had surpassed her parents' dreams by a long shot. Not only had she graduated from high school, her academics and disciplinary record much improved, but she had gone to university as well. And not just any university, but Ouran. Granted, she did not remember much of it, for she had spent the better part of the four years toasting future business connections, attending galas, and doing the horizontal tango. But the fact remained - by 24, she had become Yuzuha's right hand woman, released a fragrance of her own design (called, simply, "Kaoru"), and had been named "Heiress to Watch" by Vanity Fair Japan.

And so it was on a Friday morning in spring that she had finished putting the finishing touches on another celebrity's ball gown and called her secretary into her office.

"Kazumi, I am going to take the afternoon off," she said, putting away her folder with a smile. "I think it's high time I did something wild and crazy - like using some of my vacation time."

"Of course, Miss Kaoru," said Kazumi. Kaoru had always insisted that the staff call her that, never having stood on ceremony. "May I ask, do you have something special going on?"

"Well, yes. I'm getting married."

"MARRIED?" the secretary exclaimed, nearly jumping in surprise and dropping her pad. "Miss Kaoru, you sly fox! Why didn't you tell us! We would've had a party to congratulate you!"

"Oh, you know." Kaoru twirled a strand of hair around her ear. "I make a point of being a modern, independent woman, what with the image the company's trying to project. I didn't want to make a fuss."

"Miss Kaoru! With all due respect, if you're getting married you're more than justified... May I ask, who is he?"

"An up and coming young novelist."

"Ooh, a novelist? Artistic type, then, just like you?"

"Yes."

"So who is he? What's he written?"

"Oh, he's one of those reclusive types. Writes under a pseudonym, never goes out in public. I don't think he'd want me to say."

"Ooh, a mysterious type. How fun - but, Miss Kaoru?..."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry if this sounds forward, but may I ask something?"

"Of course. Go ahead."

"If he's a novelist, I mean, even if he's Murakami himself - which I'm assuming he's not, because Murakami's already got a wife, unless I don't know something - wouldn't that you, ehm, would be the one who, er, brings in more? Wouldn't that cause problems in the marriage?"

"Not at all, Kazumi," Kaoru replied, leaning back in her chair. "At least, I don't see why it should. Honestly, if I were to marry a high-powered executive like myself I'd foresee it causing more problems. After all, a high-powered executive might expect to tell me what to do."

...

Hikaru, like his father before him, was a major shareholder of Hitachiin Group and held a ceremonious post as Vice President, but his true career was far different. When the twins were 18, they were approached by a TV studio looking to buy the rights to their story. Hikaru agreed, but only if he got to read the script first and offer his feedback. Once he did, he spent an entire week extensively editing and rearranging the thing until little was left of the original. Then, he refused to sign anything until his changes were accepted, and once they were there was no stopping him. Having discovered a talent in himself for inventing bizarre yet perfectly realistic ways of turning tropes on their heads, and having always had a flair for words, once the movie project was done he decided "why not?" and sat down to indulge his own plot Usa-chan. He had never intended it to be much. But a month of staying up until 4 a.m. and guzzling Starbucks laced with Jack Daniels had passed, and the plot Usa-chan came to span a hundred and fifty pages, and so once again on a lark he submitted it to a publisher. The publisher called within a week, and in two years' time Hikaru was churning out light novels for high school girls at the rate of one every two months under the pen name Toroko Fujiwara. And Kaoru was fine with the latter, since it was a last laugh at Hikaru's disgraced initiatrice, who still managed to marry an elderly millionnaire despite Yuzuha's blacklist campaign. Two of the novels were made into manga and then anime, and on top of that, by the time he graduated university, he also published a serious novel as "Kaori Suzumiya," and it was whispered in literary circles that if he gathered more steam and wrote anything else, he would be a shoe-in for the Akutagawa prize in five years. His favorite thing, next to writing and reading what he composed to Kaoru before bedtime, was driving his editor crazy by pretending he had written nothing, and not revealing that his manuscripts were done until she was ready to strap him to his computer and flog him until he finished.

But more than that, he had accomplished what he set out to do. While Kaoru was being groomed to be Yuzuha's successor, he made a tidy cash flow on his own right, and judiciously looked after the family finances. His experience in high school, it seemed, had changed him, and ever since Yuzuha froze all his assets and did not release them for a year, he had always had an independent income, and always put the better half of it away "just in case clothing was no longer in fashion."


	29. The Light in My Shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This chapter was originally published as a stand alone short story under the title of "In the Hall of the Shadow King." It can also be read independently, and is found in my profile. If reposting it here is against the rules PLEASE LET ME KNOW, and I will take down the other version.

"Kaoru, can we talk?"

Kaoru was sitting at her vanity table, putting the last of her pins in place when she caught sight of Kyouya in the mirror and turned around, her veil sweeping around her torso.

"Sure. What is it, sempai?"

"Kaoru, I don't think you should marry him."

Kaoru nearly dropped the pin she was holding.

"What?"

"He's… erratic. He's not the kind of man you need."

Kaoru squinted at her friend. His lips were moving, but the meaning seeming to be coming from miles away and growing garbled in the process.

"You need someone who'll take care of you and respect you. Someone who'll make you feel safe. Someone like me."

"Like… you? Is this a joke?"

Kaoru saw the last eight years flash before her eyes, and her stomach felt like she was falling. She searched - desperately - for even a single clue that had been under her nose the whole time, but could find nothing to latch onto. Unless you counted that time -

"No joke."

"Are you drunk, sempai?"

"No. Well - I might have had a glass for courage."

Two years ago, at a particularly raucous forget-the-year party at her and her brother's condo, Kaoru had gotten so drunk on Aftershocks that she'd gotten up on a table and declared that she'd heard you should never marry the only person you've been with - and that while Hikaru had not been a virgin when they met, she HAD been. To that end, before the eyes of their whole incredulous social circle, she declared her and Hikaru on a break, seized the man closest to her - who happened to be Kyouya - and started to drag him back to her room. And when Hikaru protested she had said, "Shut up, you're coming with us," and seized him by the collar as well. Once there, she proceeded to push Kyouya on the bed and told him to take off his pants. She then commanded that Hikaru not move a step and film the whole thing on his cell phone.

Drunk though she was at the time, she remembered being very surprised. She expected the sex to be no more than exercise, but Kyouya turned out to be very much the gentleman, and - for lack of a better word - quite loving. Indeed, it had broken her heart the way he kept trying to go slow and kiss her on the mouth, even as she turned away and muttered that he leave off and fuck her into the mattress already.

She felt a quiver steal across her shoulders as she looked at the man in front of her. The fact that she could have seen someone nearly every day for years and never suspected a thing was nothing short of mental. And yet he looked back, apparently perfectly serious, his face smooth and ageless and waiting with yogic patience.

"Okay, so out of curiosity," she finally said, her voice tinged with a scoff. "Assuming - ASSUMING - I were to consider it, what would you have me do? Go out there and call it off, and then turn around and start going out with you? How's that going to look? He'll find out, you know. Or maybe I should just go out there and tell Haruhi, hey, sorry, new plan, we're doing a bridegroom switcheroo?"

"I can wait, Kaoru."

"Wait?"

"It doesn't have to be now. It can be years from now. But there's no one else in my life - and won't be."

Dear God. She looked at the floor, wringing her veil in her hands.

"It's up to you, Kaoru. But just so you know, sunk costs are best ignored when making rational decisions."

...

Kaoru ended up going out into the hall and asking to speak to Hikaru in private. When they emerged again, Hikaru looked like he'd been shot, and Kaoru looked stoic, if a little apologetic. The wedding ended up getting called off and Hikaru picked up and moved to Paris within the month, claiming that it did not matter where he lived because one could write anywhere. Two years later, Japan's most widely-circulated newspaper ran the wedding announcement of Kaoru Hitachiin, heiress to Hitachiin Designs, and Kyouya Ootori, hedge fund president. At that, point Hikaru sent Kyouya an email with a single word: "Congratulations," and the two never spoke again.

Kyouya had truly loved Kaoru ever since he first saw her bawling outside the Host Club door, and in the years that followed, he did everything he could to be a good husband. He put his research skills to work and kept meticulous, up-to-the-minute tabs of her likes and dislikes - everything from food, to creative muses, to political views. He tried to keep her entertained - taking her on surprise trips hiking in the Alps and parasailing in Hawaii. He also made sure she had her fill of orgasms in bed, and showered her with gifts, and left romantic notes on the fridge when he was absent. Neither of them heard from Hikaru, though in the time they were married "Kaori Suzumiya" - the pseudonym Hikaru published under - produced two more novels. One won the Akutagawa prize, and the one became a runaway bestseller, sparking a phenomenon dubbed "Suzu-mania."

But months and years passed, and Kaoru still grew relentlessly sadder, and after a while she had started to refuse her husband more and more - in bed and in other places. Wherever she went, she seemed to take a dark cloud with her, and before long even Kyouya could not deny it any more.

"Are you happy, Kaoru?" he asked one day. It was a Sunday during Golden Week, and they were lunching on the terrace of their villa in Karanizawa. It was a warm day, and the sunlight was pouring in waterfalls from the rooftops.

She looked up, and it was as if she had been anticipating the question.

"I'm not UNhappy."

"But you still think about him, don't you?"

She was quiet for a few moments, looking at the meniscus of her orange juice in the heavy glass goblet.

"I'm sorry." She sighed. "You know I love you, senpai." - she still called him senpai, though by then it had become a term of endearment. "Maybe not in the right way, but I do. And maybe in a different life - in a life where things made more sense - it might have worked out between us." She paused. "But you're right. I can't help but feel… connected to him. Even though he's thosands of miles away, I can feel it."

She looked like she was about to say more, so Kyouya did not interrupt.

"I'm sorry, senpai. I tried."

"I know. There's nothing to be sorry about."

She got up from her chair, and he rose to meet her. He took her in his arms, and she pressed her head against his chest.

"I suppose you can't build your happiness on the ruins of someone else's," she mused, looking into the sun glancing through the trees.

"I suppose you're right."

They were silent for a moment.

"You can have anything you like, Kaoru. I won't dispute it."

"I don't want anything. Just my company, that's all."

"It's yours."

The next day, she left, having taken nothing of what he had given her.

…

The afternoon sunlight filled every corner of the bedroom under the roof, and Hikaru had pulled the covers over his head. Still, the sun was persistent, warming every bit of the ceiling and walls until it felt like its rays had all but climbed into bed with him. He moaned and rolled over, pulling the pillow over his head for good measure, but it was of no avail. The doorbell went off in the distance, only to be abruptly cut short as the maid got the door. Hikaru sighed and tried to drop off to sleep again, but a few minutes passed and he couldn't - so he sat up, and then the door opened with a creak.

"Hello, Hikaru."

It was her. Tall and grecian in her long white skirt and her hair in crown braids, it was definitely her, with a small travel bag standing ceremoniously beside her. He had not seen her in seven years.

Hikaru's mind ran the gamut of everything her could have said - from an acrid, "Hello, Mrs. Ootori," to "How's the snake doing?" to, when he noticed that she wasn't wearing a ring, "Come crawling back, eh? Who says I even want you anymore?" But who was he kidding? There was nothing he could do to stay the tears in his throat but get up, put his arms around her, and whisper -

"Kaoru… My love. You've come back to me."

…

Kyouya blinked his eyes, and the contours of the room came slowly into focus. He reached across the bed to the bedside table for his glasses, and looked at the clock. The previous night had been a late one - there was a situation at the office - and by the time he had come home, he had had only two hours to sleep. And yet he had still woken a half an hour before his alarm - as he always had, every day of his life, no matter how tired he was. He sat up in bed and rolled his shoulders to chase away the remnants of sleep, and squinted into the sunlight slanting through the shades.

Dreams were a strange thing. In a dream, one could woo, marry and divorce the love of one's life in the space of two hours.

But no matter. It was high time to get going. The wedding was only a few hours away, and he had been so busy that he had ordered their gift, but had not picked it up yet.


	30. The Happiness of Kaoru Hitachiin

"Kaoru! You're late! And to your own wedding, too! -"

A shrill and frazzled Yuzuha, already in her mother-of-the-bride dress and with a pantsuit-clad Haruhi in tow, had been keeping vigil in the driveway.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Yuzuha!" cried Kaoru, nearly tripping over her heels as she scrambled out of the limo. "I had an appointment -"

"Never mind! Let's go!" Yuzuha grabbed her by the wrist. "Here, put this over your head!" She snatched a sheet out of the hands of a bemused Haruhi. "Hikaru shouldn't see you! It's bad luck - and I don't trust those boys to keep him busy!"

"R-right, okay," Kaoru chuckled as the cloth settled over her face and the two women guided her up the steps. "Because he totally won't know it's me by the rest of my body…"

That, more or less, was how the afternoon had gone - for Yuzuha, who had spent the first few several years pointedly ignoring the twins' relationship had since warmed up to the idea. Indeed, she warmed up to it so much that she transformed into the stereotypical wedding-obsessed mother, and had spent the six-odd months of planning on the verge of an apoplexy.

But the favors were all arranged, the seat cards were in place, and neither the florist, nor the chefs, nor the musicians had called in any disasters. Even Kaoru's dress had not been accidentally switched for size fourteen, and she had somehow managed to make it to the altar without incident.

Haruhi finished her prescribed officiant's speech, and turned to her friend.

"Do you, Kaoru Suzumiya" - by Kaoru's request, Haruhi used her old name - "Take this man, Hikaru Hitachiin, to be your husband, for as long as you both shall live?"

Kaoru looked around, and saw that the room was as decked with smiles as it was with white roses. From Yuzuha's tearful smile, to Kyouya's civilly restrained one, to Honey-senpai's unabashed one and her Ouran Public girlfriends' beaming ones - for she had not forgotten them over the years. How strange it was, that an entire room full of people had accepted her and Hikaru. Who on earth could believe she would be so lucky?

Kaoru's eyes fell on two chairs in the front row.

The more time went on, the more Kaoru thought of her parents, and, in recent times especially, she found that not a day passed without her wishing they could see her. In fact, although never before a believer, she set up a shrine for them in her room, and had taken up talking to them on the daily. Because it was not fair, she though - still, after all those years. That if they had not died, she might never have found her happiness. To that end, she thought it was only proper that they be honored at her wedding day - and two chairs were left empty intentionally.

Except - they weren't empty.

Eiji Suzumiya sat on the left, and Sayoko Suzumiya sat on the right, and both were smiling with tears in their eyes. Sayoko wore a small pillbox hat and one of Yuzuha's Chanel suits, and looked like she had not aged a day. She even wore her favorite, garish purple eyeshadow.

Eiji, compactly built and fit as ever, leaned over to touch his wife's shoulder and whispered, "Doesn't she look beautiful?"

"Yes." Her mother pressed a hankie, which she had been clutching, to her eyes. "Especially with the flowers around her face. I hope she's happy."

"Of course she is," whispered Kaoru's father. "I know my daughter. I can tell if she's happy or if she's sad from a mile away." He looked up at Kaoru and waved.

"We love you," he mouthed. "We knew you'd do something great."

The apparitions began to fade.

"No… No…" Kaoru wanted to sob, and run and seize them by the hands. "I did none of this on my own… If I had not lost you, if I had not met -"

"Nonsense" - her father chuckled. "Anyone can be handed anything. The idea is not to drop it."

"Kaoru?" - she heard Haruhi's voice.

She blinked, and the ghosts vanished, and she turned back to Haruhi and her brother. The silence had grown deafening, but Hikaru watched her curiously, and without a hint of apprehension. He knew. And she knew he knew.

"I do," she said, taking his hand. "I do. A thousand times, I do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the end. There will be one more chapter.


	31. Epilogue: The Archbishop's Bridge

The hubbub of the wedding successfully done with, the champagne successfully drunk, and the bridal bouquet successfully caught - by some strange stroke of luck, by Honey Senpai - the twins' friends loaded them onto a private jet, destination adamantly concealed from Kaoru. An hour had passed since takeoff, and the twins were lounging in the salon, sharing a Veuve Cliquot. Kaoru had changed from her wedding gown into a smart white travel-dress, and was looking rosy and by all accounts ready for a nap as soon as the bubbles stopped streaming up the sides of her champagne flute.

"So what is this one?" she asked, as Hikaru booted up his laptop in preparation for their pre-bed ritual - a half an hour's reading of his latest compositions. "A Toroko or a Kaori?"

"A Toroko. This one's about the twins - except this time they leave Uki Doki Memorial and end up in an eating disorder clinic."

"Ooh." Kaoru swirled the champagne in her glass, watching the bubbles disappear in the light. "Makimura's gonna be mad. I think I recall him saying something about how if he sees another Trashy Toroko on the shelves, he'll hang himself on the nearest sakura tree."

Hikaru sniffed. "He'll do nothing of the kind. It's his job to encourage me to write big, serious fiction, but my sources tell me that he's actually Miss Fujiwara's biggest fan. He's got all the host club books, and even an Usa-chan doll and Belzeneth puppet, though I shudder to think what he does to them at night."

Kaoru snorted.

"Besides, there are hundreds of light novels published every year, but far from all of them end up being made into cult animes, so NYEH."

"Alright." Kaoru smiled. "I'm going to go wash my face, and then we can have reading and sleepies. Sound like a plan?"

She got up and walked past him, lovingly brushing her fingers across his shoulder before disappearing into the bathroom. Three minutes later, she had just about finished her evening routine - nothing fancy, even after a number of years in fashion, just running the water over her fingers until it was just the right temperature, then lathering up with a gentle cleanser - when she heard the door creak behind her. She straightened up, and saw Hikaru's smiling face in the mirror.

"Excuse me, sir," she said, her lips curling upwards. "But this is the ladies' room."

"Is it really?" Hikaru raised an eyebrow as two pairs of hazel eyes met in the mirror. "Because I was fairly certain I saw both a male and a female stick figure on the door." He took a step toward her and put his hand on her hip, pressing his lips to her shoulder as he slid his hand downward and pushed up her skirt.

"Ooh, you naughty little -" He caught his breath, nibbling more brazenly his fingers grazed an inner thigh. "You wore a g-string with a wedding dress?"

"Yes. It's black. "

"Oh, dear me, Kaoru, dear me… You do realize you just signed your sentence? Now I HAVE to see it. And... ooh, dare I say the rust is gone from the basement?"

"Uh-huh. Nice and waxed. You should say thank you - I doubled my risk of getting a cooch infection just for you." She smiled, lacing her fingers into his hair as he continued to take an inordinate amount of interest in her neck, sucking sensuously - but not too hard. "To be honest," she mused absently, drinking in the tingles trickling down her spine, "I was kind of expecting you to fuck me in the bathroom before the reception was over. I'm surprised you lasted this long."

Indeed, when the twins got into university, they moved into a condo together and began a vibrant sex life - one that included a strap-on and anal beads that Kaoru liked to use on Hikaru when he had been "bad." They officially had two bedrooms, but only ever used one of them, and on one notable occasion Yuzuha visited to find that one of their dish washers was used exclusively for sex toys.

"Mhm, well, sorry for the delay," Hikaru purred. "But if you're such a bathroom slut, then maybe we're in the right place..."

"Hey, I'm no slut. You took my maidenly virtue and you're the only guy I've been fucking ever since."

"Except for that one time you fucked Kyouya at uni."

"Yeah, that doesn't count. I was super drunk. And you were there the whole time. Filming and jerking off to it."

"Mhm - touche, I guess. But you made me film it, and being angry and jealous made me so hot, even though I knew it meant nothing."

"It didn't really mean nothing. I was getting back at you for Toroko - and I came. Twice."

Hikaru stopped kissing and looked up. "Well, then that settles it," he said. "I guess I'm just going to have to make you come three times today. In fact, I won't stop fucking you until you do."

He turned her around by the shoulders, pushing her firmly against the wall, and as he did so, she did not resist, merely sighing pleasantly as he pushed one of her legs onto the counter and slid up her skirt, fumbling with his fly. The moment he had stopped speaking, his lips were back, hungrily, on Kaoru's again, and she closed her eyes, drawing a breath as she got ready to sail away with the warmth between his legs and his turgid lips coaxing her to pleasure.

"You know, I lied," he whispered, momentarily breaking the kiss. "I don't want to fuck you. I want to make love to you."

"Uh, yeah," Kaoru laughed softly. "Says the guy who has me up against a wall in an airplane bathroom."

"No, I mean it." He kissed her, firmly, on the lips. "You know I would be either dead or in jail without you, don't you?"

…

Nine hours later, the twins had just barely woken up from an exhausted slumber and Kaoru's head was still buzzing. But the captain had finished making the descent announcement, and their clothes were scattered all over the floor, so it was high time to get going. Kaoru rubbed her eyes and pulled herself to her feet, fumbling for her carryon. She also decided to pull open a blind - for she was, thankfully, tired but not hungover - and as she did so, the city below had just happened to come into view, making the Hitachiin heiress gasp and nearly bite her hand off as she clapped it over her mouth.

Over the course of her time with the Hitachiins, Kaoru had become very well-traveled. Granted, during the first year she and her brother had been restricted - after all, Hikaru was being punished for climbing into her bed, and the Host club never went outside the country on Haruhi's account. But once the term was up, Yuzuha began taking Kaoru to Fashion Week as part of her grooming to take over the company. And when the twins got into university, her and Hikaru's social club globe-trotted whenever they could. And yet - the destination she saw below her was one she just happened to have continuously missed - first thanks to final exams, then due to a bout of the flu, and afterwards, simply because everyone kept passing it up on account of it being a "been-there-done-that."

Yes, my dear readers. Having lived nine years in the lap of luxury, Kaoru had somehow managed to completely avoid Paris. But as the plane veered down and the wing dipped long enough to reveal an A-shaped tower and a horned cathedral rising over a metropolis straddling a river, she let out a high-pitched squeal that was quite out of character, and hugged Hikaru more tightly than she had done in weeks.

…

A brief April rain had passed, and a pale, shimmering sunlight lay splattered across the pavement. Kaoru stepped out into the street from under a parapet, and looked up at the sky. It was early in the month, and she was glad that she had worn her trench coat - for although most of the clouds had cleared, there was still a chill in the air, and the early blooms stood out in stark contrast against the wet stone and the neoclassical austerity of the first arrondissement.

"So, Paris," she smiled, the look of Napoleon himself glistening in her eye. "What's there to do in this town?"

"Well," Hikaru said, materializing at her elbow, guidebook in hand. "We COULD use the Kaoru method and point to a random page in Frommer's to see where we should go. But personally I think there are two places we should definitely hit up at one point or other: the Père Lachaise cemetery so I can pay respects to my homies Balzac, Proust, and Oscar Wilde, as well as -"

"Your… homies?" Kaoru chuckled, raising an eyebrow as he pulled her into a hug.

"As well as the Pont de l'Archevêché, so we can deposit THIS." He pulled a small box out of his pocket, and held it out to her.

"Oh. Is that what I think it is?"

"Yep. Open it, though."

Kaoru picked up the box and pulled on the ribbon - pearly white against the bright aqua-colored wrapping. Inside was a box of the same color, and she lifted the lid to reveal a small lock with Kanji of their names and the words "Fragrence" and "Radience" engraved in the middle.

"Do you like it?"

"Hikaru, you idiot… You spelled your own name wrong. And mine, too." **

(Kaoru means "fragrance" and Hikaru means light, and can also mean "radiance." Lovers have a custom of putting "love padlocks" with their names on fence of Pont de l'Archevêché, or Archbishop's Bridge.)

"No way!" He grabbed the box out of her hand, peering at the lock.

"It's FragrAnce, and RadiAnce, with an A."

Hikaru stared, dumbstruck, first at the lock and then at Kaoru, and his face slowly assumed the shade of one who was caught with his pants around his ankles in front of a large auditorium.

"W-wait, are you sure?"

"Absolutely sure. Check on your phone if you don't believe me. Although, to be fair, I'm not sure why you didn't check back when you got it, considering your… history."

"I - I'm sorry, Kaoru." Hikaru's voice trembled, and he stepped away, hands tightening over the box. "I was just in such a hurry, what with everything going on with the wedding - I just didn't think… I'm sorry, I'm a dumbass…"

"That's okay." Kaoru took a step toward him, taking him by the hand. "You're my dumbass, and I love you."


End file.
